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The Woman on the Steps |
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written
by pev42 / 10.24.2005 |
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Assignment |
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The Spanish Steps are a place to be passed through, a place that is conscious of flow. The stairs split and rejoin twice at terraces that are like pools that divide the segments of a waterfall. People stop on the terraces for pictures and to admire the view. Vendors wait there, trying to sell purses, belts, and sunglasses to anyone who will pay attention to them. After the second terrace, the stairs form one unified cascade down to the Bernini fountain below.
On my way down the steps, on one of the sides that split off, I encountered a woman on her knees, bowed down so that her nose touched the worn stone of the steps. She was entirely covered in black except for her right hand, which was cupped around a small, empty bowl in front of her head. Completely motionless and silent, she broke up the flow of the stairs. I paused and tried to understand what it must feel like to be her, but I couldn’t imagine crouching that motionless, that still and silent. She was dead to the world, her life contained only in the consciousness of waiting.
This woman reminded me of the monks in the crypt of Santa Maria della Concezione. The small, bent figures of the monks are finished with life, but their bodies still wait to be laid to rest. In the circus of their crypt, they are constantly put on display, forced to perform either the role of gruesome remains or saintly relics for all who come to stare at them. Outside the crypt, the Via Venetto serves as a place for American tourists to come home to. Hotels, a Hard Rock Café, and the American Embassy line the wide street, with trees and flower bushes in planter boxes to separate the lanes of traffic. There, more than anyplace else in Rome, I feel like I could be on an American street. It is a place to arrive at rather than a place to wait in or a place to pass through.
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