January 2009 Archives

Finally made it to the "flagship" store--a pissy little boutique in the Campo Marzio area...and what a disappointment. Having grown to favour pineider's production for tight weave and excellent sizing (as well as their remarkable colour palette), I expected an impressive array of products that would speak to me.

Walking in, I was overbourne almost immediately by the odour of decaying people, seconded closely by the prim and smug Roman faces that stood behind and in front of the counter--apparently the Princeps Romanum frequent this mastiche dive. I selected the only likely sheets in the store for a price quote, which was €15 for 3 cards. Thats €5 for one 3x5 card. Okay, I am a fan, but not of getting ripped off--which seems to be an Italian sport, by the way.

Out the door, which I pointedly left open, but which one of the pissy customers was too quick to shut at my heels--I guess for all my art I'm just not born to certain manners...

It is a serious and substantial shift in life's view when one's preconceived notions find their falsity revealed. Immediately. Forcibly. Irrevocably.

My delusions from a youthful sense of evolution biased by my own position...not the geography or culture in which I find myself, recede in the face of growing sensibility of geography and culture.

Whatever privation or denial is inherent in the American ethos, one's self remains "free-er" to further delusion or asceticism.

What mode of movement could be more magnificent than flying loftily above all concerns or considerations?

Neither weather, nor geography perturb me--save perhaps to cause my vision to instigate philosophical arguments on the nature of this world.

Perhaps my relationship with the world becomes less defined, but not so nebulous within this machine--whose agents will insist that I deny myself the reverie out of the window so that my fellows may enjoy their canned revelations in book and film format...equally viewable on the ground or in the air.

My everyday, it seems, mingles not well with the everyday of those with whom I mingle not well.

What imagination it takes to consider Rome. From any distance the city has the same impact. And now, as my proximity increases momentarily, I must reconcile my imaginings with reality.

For any people who think a few thousand revolutions around the sun an eternity, the sum of my hours in transit are themselves not unremarkable.

Yet I too feel apprehension that the locus, regardless of its relationship to infinity, may harbour some element that suggest that number beyond numbers.

The top five things I did in Rome that I had always wanted to do:

5. Eat pasta with an Alla Matriciana sauce
4. Walk the Forum at night
3. See the great cedars and pines
2. Walk off a train at Termini (like in Felini's Roma)
1. See the inside of the Pantheon

The top five things I wanted to do, but didn't:

5. Walk through the Coloseum
4. Find a certain bag by AG Spaulding
3. See the Pope
2. See Frascati
1. Have sex with an Italian