Italian Diaries #2: 'In the Place that Can Make you Change'
'But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for' - Dead Poets Society (1989)
On the third day, we went to the gardens of Borghese. I wanted desperately to go to the gallery and witness the ghastly head of Goliath in the palm of David and other of Carrivagio’s masterpieces, but the trip was decided and booked 3 days prior to leaving the house and tickets to the museum were sold out for the next 2 weeks at least. The gardens were magnificent in themselves and I couldn’t help but to be scribbling poetry down the entire time. Nothing’s perfect. Nothing’s wrong.
Last week I was in my 21st century bedroom covered with media and plastic. Now, my feet are on magical grounds. I was learning that somewhere I had only learnt about in books was truly lit by the same sun that wakes me back home. Everywhere felt like trespass. The grandeur was something I didn’t deserve to even look upon. It was too much. It was gorgeous. The holiness and power of the city I was strolling in was starting to catch up with me. I was hot and a little more sweaty than I would like to share.
‘if I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss’
The Temple of Aescapius was in front of me, guarding her lake. Not the worst of eternities, I must believe. She was the god of medicine, and though Rome has fallen, the language dead and devotion to these gods lost along with it, I felt her cure. I didn’t even touch her waters but I felt baptised in it. The previous day I had filled my water bottle up from the Trevi fountain. It was pure drinking water, but tasted like the holiest liqueur I had ever come into contact with as I raised my toast to Italy.
My numerous daily espressos were elixir of life and with every shot along with every time I rinsed my face in the fountains of every piazza, I felt I was washing myself a-new and Italy was seeping into my skin a little more with each drop. I took home a souvenir – a 2€ magnet reading ‘Carpe Diem’ that, when reading on a wall of twenty different designs, I could hear Mr Keating from my favourite film ‘Dead Poets Society’ recite back to me: ‘seize the day, boys.’
I wish I could tell Mr Williams that I have tried and succeeded. I have tried and succeeded and the true, pure life that I lived this week has proven just how important it is to do so with your eyes, heart and soul - not a camera. I have recently had a huge clear out of all of the shit that takes up space in my room. I lamented to dad of my claustrophobia (in every sense of the word) and how trinkets and toot held me down – “they mean nothing!”
He agreed wholeheartedly, but returned to Jack and our wooden sculpture of a man playing the djembe (also a souvenir from Zimbabwe) who guards the front door.
“I think it is still nice to have things that your are attached to if they carry meaning.” He told me.
A souvenir only works when it is a souvenir. Just as Ned by the door reminds me of the spirit of Africa that I am yet to meet, I feel like my magnet holds the spirit of Italy as well as Mr Keating and all that I have learnt from my Roman travels. The more I stared at the bold lettering, I learnt that the real takeaway is inside of me, that wonderful, sexy, fire of love that I was wiping on my face as it gushed from the Fontana dei Cavalli Marini that will never leave my bloodstream - a spirit that can only be described as Italy.
Everyone seems to be in pursuit of growing up. That’s what it seems like, anyway. My friends always in fear of what is to come and the terror of leaving behind their comforting quiet past to when life becomes difficult and real. I don’t know if I am alone or if everybody is just lying to fit in or coming of age films just give everybody some placebo of feeling normal that I am immune to, but I don’t feel that whatsoever. I cant feel fear of the future as It is all I want, I’m not scared for being alone in a city I’ve never seen, navigating lord knows what. I thirst for it. I don’t know if it is my poor circumstances but I truly cannot wait for the future in which I get to thrive in truth. It isn’t that I don’t enjoy my current state, I am so enamoured with every moment and hold seventeen dear to my heart but I by no means see eighteen as the Garden of Eden. I just find myself getting a smidge wiser everyday and that isn’t due to age, its hard work. I know change will come but I don’t want to fight it? I yearn for life and wake up every morning parched to jump out of bed.
Over breakfast, my mother spoke of the exact same topics that she had done all week: ‘My friend just got back from Italy. [The country that we have the pleasure to visit right now] She went to Naples, Pisa and Lake Guarda all in one on a huge expensive cruise! It all looked so lovely.’ As she sat on her very own holiday, ‘show and telling’ us of others, she smirked like a 7 year old getting her times tables correct.
With absolutely no detail, only ticking off the boxes of what made that holiday great – she could say she did it. I watched my dad’s face every time she brought it up with it’s flush of shame that all that he could provide was not enough. Like our holiday was absolutely nothing compared to the 3 city extravaganza seen on Facebook. All she spoke of was her friend’s opulence in comparison to our seemingly squalid outing. I thought it was quite nice but all she does is nit-pick. ‘It is very smelly’ ‘Oh dear! is that broken glass on the floor!’
Maybe it is the fact that she wants the best for her children. Maybe she will never be content with what she has. I have always been taught to be grateful for what I have and now my mother doesn’t seem to be able to practice any of what she preaches.
She hated all sense of the foreign. She wants to move to another European country soon. I don’t think she could handle it. All week she spoke of how she missed the pub, the climate. She cant stand the opposing lifestyles – I knew that a smoker was nearby because my eye caught her scrunched, tantrum face, not the scent. It seemed as though we had booked a getaway to somewhere that she didn’t want. She wanted an all inclusive, all enclosed holiday park with a pool and the culture outside of her reach so that she could go the zoo as and when she decided. But now we were not at home, we weren’t in London. Nor were we in a corporation’s enclosed box that told us when and what to do, eat and feel. If we were, we would’ve sat in the sun and – that is all. We would’ve spent a devil’s ransom on flights to the other side of the continent and sat like slugs with our eyes closed for two weeks in a caricature of our own home. What a treat !
‘I just feel like there would have been more restaurants or bars around here, I really fancy a pint.’ My mother said a good three times as we walked through the ruins of ancient fucking Rome. We aren’t at home, London is 300 miles away and feels like a million.
I bought a magnet from one of those toot sellers that read ‘Carpe Diem’ and damn I will.
We were walking home one night after a day of sight seeing in which I threw my euro into the Fontana Di Trevi to ensure that I would return one day to this magical city. Fairies lined the guide home like I am Sita returning to my love. An Italian man singing the Swedish ABBA with his fender guitar and a multitude of every kind of human on the planet spinning and singing and smiling. Whether they knew the words or what they mean or who anyone else on that street was didn’t matter. Hands were in hands of whoever you found to revel in life. Rome fell, their language is dead but you can’t kill spirit. Strangers are no danger when you are dancing.
I could barely remember who I was or what A Levels were. For now, love is king and I return to my seventeenth birthday. My dad took me to a pub cover band and I was dancing to the police with a man that I had never met but, right now, we had both lived the same life. Our fathers had played ‘So Lonely’ on repeat until our ears could take no more, to prepare us for this very moment. My birthday party was a week later and I was in my back garden singing Panic! At the Disco, ‘A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out’. An album loved and never really let leave my system. I was twelve when I first heard it and although I felt so aligned with something, I was so alone when I found that no one else I knew felt the same rhythm. Well, as I said, I am seventeen and the things I thought only existed online were in my back garden. I’m singing these words with three of my best friends that know every lyric and miss Ryan Ross and definitely existed when I was twelve. A blink and a gust of wind and I am back in Rome and I am seventeen and I never want the busker to stop and I am twelve and I am six and one day, I will be forty.
Its pretty Narcissistic to believe that you are the only person in the world that feels the way you do. In a world of 8 billion people, you might be alone, but definitely not for too long.
Recently, I have really been recalling those 2018 emo tumblr memes of pictures of Tyler Joseph when he started out Twenty One Pilots and was writing songs like ‘Migrane’ and ‘Isle of Flightless Birds’ right next to a smiley image of him finding his beautiful wife and starting a family that I watched grow up as I did. The caption would be something like ‘it gets better’ and meant to motivate those unhappy kids that you aren’t thirteen forever and the world has so much to offer.
They really did foster so much hope in me and even though I have grown away from those bands, I still recall it and think of other success stories and tell myself that that future will someday be mine. Throughout those years (I truly cant believe it has been six years since my little emo -not a- phase) I always had a little dread in me that maybe joy and success weren’t waiting for me with cookies and a little card that reads ‘you did it!’.
I still really have no idea whether I’m going to be met with a beautiful family to sing Peter, Paul and Mary to, but I know that I am currently happy to sit and appreciate them myself and I love being alive. I love to be in awe of nature and see the whimsy of Oscar Wilde’s wording bring me to tears. Who knew I would be listening to a violinist from the top of Castel Saint’Angelo. The fact that I was never sure that I’d get to this point makes it all the sweeter and the fact I am not sure if I will ever see anything better? Well if I get there, it is going to be a treat.
That’s all I have, for now, I think. Just a little rant of someone that I think will never change but someone that I can use as a portrayal of what not to do. Many novelists, Angela Carter, for one, see the previous generation’s faults and hyperbolise them to create a warning, a sign that change is needed. They see that some people are set in their ways and there is no point in trying to change them, but you can learn from their mistakes. I cant wait to travel Europe with my friends and suck out that marrow.
Thank you. Just thank you.