A little love from Rome

Since I learned so much abroad in Rome I decided to share my portfolio I turned in. Enjoy!

St. Peter's

I entered St. Peter’s like a child.

A child, because I felt like I had just been born into history. A child, because my wonder lacked full understanding. A child, because I never wanted to leave. I fell into St. Peter’s the way that my eight-year-old self disappeared inside an art project: paint smudged fingers, paint in my hair, paint in my dreams.

I touched a tiny marble piece woven into an angel on the wall.  The piece disappeared, smooth and cool under my pointer finger. I was that tiny piece too, just a freckle, a glimmer placed in the rippling crowd of hundreds, all their own stories and colors.
 

I teetered up the Copula’s winding cliff side to see the view. Below, mosaic flushed in the wild marble sea that spilled roses, gold, and light; so much light resounded. 

I flew with my child’s arms and legs to its mountaintop. Rome rolled out below me in orange rooftops, misty water bridges, toy trains and cars. I suddenly had giant’s hands, hands that could pluck the rounded hedges from their lush gardens. The dark forests would be a simple pinprick to uproot.  The rocky splendor of Rome’s lost empire glowed like lighthouses at bay.

All threaded into the open blue sky, which surpassed even St. Peter’s splendor in its silent infinity.

The Fateful Story of Persephone and Hades

(As Told Via the Pomegranate)

Other fruit have lived fateful lives. Take the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden of Eden. Or the apple that sent Snow White into a white-washed slumber. Or coconuts, they’re just plain inconvenient. My tale is unfortunate as well, although you might enjoy hearing that it is altogether the most truthful, as Persephone and Hades enjoy exaggeration and evasion.

Now, Persephone was but a child still flowering into a woman when she learned of the legend of Hades and his dreadful fruit. Her nymphs whispered that it is as red as an open wound and has hundreds of tiny eyes. (I would like to remind you, reader, that I am actually quite beautiful and agreeable outside of Rome.) Anyway, whoever consumed me would surely rule the god of hell. Hades likes to pretend that he captured Persephone, because he is still too infatuated to admit her failings. Persephone is too embarrassed to admit her childishness.

Thus, being the cunning, curious child that she was, she concocted a game of love. Now, she did not understand how dangerous love can really be, its thirst unquenchable and vulnerable to recklessness in the hands of power. But she was a child. She promised Cupid her field of flowers for an arrow driven into Hades’ hellish heart. Having no one to love in the underworld, he stole up his fiery steps to his gate and begged to see the object of his love. Surely the arrow drew him near!

Persephone appeared before him, basking in the sunlight on her balcony, twirling a wind-blown curl around a finger. She smelled of tulips, sea salt and lemons. Hades loved her even in the light, though it made him long to bathe again in darkness. Cringing from the living smells around him, heart hammering, he strode up to her. Persephone fled. Perhaps seeing his long, hallow face, unblinking eyes, and rancid body shook her to her senses. (Trust me, after spending eternity with this guy I’m well acquainted with his bad looks.) Persephone found an escape through the opening of an iron gate, which she slammed in his lovesick face.

He let out a howl of rage and despair. She had locked him out of hell. For six months she paced his steaming chambers enduring the stench of his throne. She drank from the ashen river, which slightly eased her hunger pains from reaching for me, her greatest fear. For six months Hades clung to shadows deep in forests, tore up vineyards, howled with the wolves, and filled the skies with the sulfur of volcanoes.

Finally, Persephone could endure her hunger no longer. She timidly pulled me from the thorny vine. Just one nibble! She decided, and with my blood the gates of hell re-opened. Hades hobbled, huffing heat and hope and wild rage, out of the desert to his stairway and sobbing beloved. Thus, Persephone now rules as Queen, and the King of Hell is still intoxicated with his fallen beauty, unbeknownst to his helpful pomegranate.

Yet Another Venus

 I wonder how they found you.

You could have faded into a garden

or shattered in a war.

You stand above me sighing like a white lily under a gentle glow of museum lights, surrounded by other still flowers in time.

You look as though you have just stepped out of a bath to survey the water you’ve left smelling like roses.

Even your arms have been poetically broken.

I can imagine you once commanding them with such sensual ease,

a gesture that could quake an army of men.

Perhaps you only beckoned to one.

He would have been a man who interested you, perhaps a man who resisted your wine kisses and bewildered you.

Perhaps, in a cold, flushed rage you sealed his end in shame.

Yet, I’d like to believe that he softened your marble heart.

Or perhaps your lost gesture

was simply to let the bath water drain.

An Encounter With the Gods

All the gods are in ruins now.

Vespas sputter by, tearing through the streets.

Locals smoke under a gently hissing fountain.

Tourists gawk through cameras, pointing-

See, look how the gods have crumbled now.

Yet their throne remains in perfect sphere.
Enter into its mouth.
Descend down its marble throat
into the cool belly.
The street noise fades
as your own greatness unhinges,
and above you it rises:
the blue orb,
the perfect holy water,
a vessel to the eternal.
Stare as it closes in on you, ever closing and ever growing.

How did one speak to the gods here thousands of years ago?
Did the gods demand joy or mournful penitence?
Did music charm their ears?
Did bowed heads inspire revelation and healing?
Or was it the silence that they desired most?

Yet the gods are in ruins, replaced by solemn marble saints
aglow and gazing,
calm, yet strangely full of vigor
as if having once lived.
How they speak of holy things among such earthly people.

But the small man on the cross, hidden near the golden sarcophagus
does not stare.

Is heaven achieved by the grandest schemes
or extended through the arms of suffering?

The Sunflower

This afternoon I bought a sunflower in the Campo de Fiori. “Che bello!” I said in my best Italian as I handed the vender due Euros. He wrapped it in foil, and I carried it home like a child with an ice cream cone. No vase to be found, I slipped it snugly into a Chianti wine bottle with a long neck.

Is it funny that after all the sunflowers you’ve bought me, I’ve never looked at one closely before? Every other sunflower has shone from my desk like a beacon of light in the Seattle haze. Here in my sun-baked apartment, this Roman sunflower still offers itself.

I study it closely. Dew clings to its innermost circle like rhinestones in a velvet gown. The surrounding circle seems made of a thousand little mouths. In the outmost rim a thousand tiny black birds fly. A tiny worm emerges and disappears again under the folds in flight.

Now its yellow petals seem strangely misplaced, lifting out in flaming gusts of gold. Each wear a thousand tiny wrinkles, folded so softly you’d hardly know. Its leaves are like misty rivers with many stones that flicker in light streaks under water leaps.

Such a wondrous world in so small a face gazing at me now! It is like summer born out of a hazy January morning. It is like us. Remember when we startled each other? The shy girl with the yellow umbrella, the boy who couldn’t forget about her. You were that delightful surprise in a long winter.

Dear Saint Christopher,

You are said to have aided many travelers in their journeys. Legend has it that you were 7.5 ft tall with a fierce face. You carried many people across a stream, and one day even bore a child worth the weight of the world. I have never prayed to a saint, but I wouldn’t mind talking to you right now.

            Rome has only one river, the Tiber (as you probably know, since you are still quite the celebrity there). You likely also know that Rome has many other “rivers,” all constantly merging, diverging, and conversing again. In the soft morning light, I could follow the rattling of the fruit carts on their way to Campo de Fiori. In the afternoon, I became the common trout: a pink faced tourist in a mass of other pink faces. I walked on cobblestone that once held the feet of gladiators, emperors, and commoners who couldn’t afford to be remembered. It is also the cobblestone of stilettos. In the evenings, cigarette smoke from restaurant tables flooded my nostrils and slipped away, only to join another shadow on the orange walls, the marble, or the vespas. 

So how does a traveler encounter this colossal sea of rivers? Some moments I floated on a raft and enjoyed the sun on my back. Other times I flailed over a waterfall and plunged into the abyss. Does that sound overly dramatic to you? Perhaps I shouldn’t underestimate your empathy, as you often encountered both ease and struggle crossing the stream. Perhaps you knew you were along for a rocky ride and that helped you take it in stride.

Charles Dickens never found the ride pleasant, although it became worthwhile during his trips to the coliseum. Grown over with grass and other plant species, it was perhaps its most alive self when he saw it. It had become a greenhouse, softened by earthly splendor. Dickens felt himself inside two merging rivers: the gruesome past and the solitary present. What a contradiction! He confessed he could “never get through a day without going back to it,” yet found its ghostly presence terrible: “erect and grim; haunting the old scene; despoiled by pillaging Popes and fighting Princes, but not laid; wringing wild hands of weed, and grass, and bramble; and lamenting to the night in every gap and broken arch—the shadow of its awful self, immovable!” (161) Although a memory of its former self, the coliseum no longer reeked of blood and corpses. In Dickens’s day, its magnificence still remained in a new form of loneliness and abandonment. It possessed a haunting beauty because it was in ruins.

            Rome is a city of contradictions, as Dickens clearly encountered. Rome demanded me to hold its warring histories and ideas in my hands, my heart, and my head. I don’t know if Rome could be discovered in any other way. As you are a saint, you might be interested to hear that my biggest struggle was actually with your folk. Coming from a protestant background, I couldn’t understand why you needed more attention than anybody else. The first church we went into, or at least the first church I remember crying in was Sant’Ignazio di Loyola. Stepping out of the Roman sun into its quiet corners felt like exiting from one world to another. I only let my eyes glimmer, although a gasp escaped my throat when I saw the dizzying ceiling. The heavens opened above me while tangled bodies clung, robes unfurling, grasping eternity. (I learned later of a secret within Sant’Ignazio: the domed ceilings are actually an illusion; the painting only creates the impression of distance.) After regaining my breath, I became aware of the low chanting of hidden monks resounding through the hall. Candles, crystal chandeliers, and fake torches adorned the walls. A wooden confession box stood to my right with a gold handle. Christopher, I’m sure you know all about marble, but I’ll just add that its intricacy and beauty is remarkable! The white and red pillars clasped in gold and expansive floor seemed like fire trapped in ice. Despite the overwhelming awe, negative feelings began to surface. I felt disoriented trying to distinguish my faith from the God presented there. I questioned the integrity behind the wealth that became the beauty, and the largeness of the saints to the smaller, scarcer crucifixes. I couldn’t shake the feeling that God had become absorbed in the building and could be lost when exiting.

             I learned that while Rome requires much of its travelers, one can try to forget the contradictions or continue to converse with them. During our weekend trip to Pompeii we encountered the lush beauty of Vesuvius, who is also the monster that singed horror into its victims’ faces forever. Johann Von Goethe, a German writer in the 18^th century, writes of his visit there. During his brief stay, he witnesses the volcano coughing up black fumes and lava. Shortly after, he enjoys a glass of wine with a view of sea. Reflecting upon his stay, he makes a strange conclusion: “I could feel how confusing such a tremendous contrast must be. The Terrible beside the Beautiful, the Beautiful beside the Terrible, cancel one another out and produce a feeling indifference. The Neapolitan would certainly be a different creature if he did not feel himself wedged between God and the Devil”  (215). How could one forget that they are in the midst of a heaven and hell on earth? Yet they did. Perhaps it became such an integrated part of daily life that what so clearly inspired Goethe was lost to the very people that dwelled there.

            However, I couldn’t surrender to indifference, as we continued to enter into Catholic churches and were asked to write about them. I suppose I could say that I felt lost. What should I write? How do I sort out my jumbled feelings, from anger to sadness to smallness? You probably stared down at me from time to time from your lofty perch on a wall. I didn’t pray to you, but I prayed to God that I could better understand. I learned through the process that honesty was my greatest asset through conversing with Catholicism. Honesty, (especially the messy kind) allowed and enabled the dialogue to be consistent. Often these conversations didn’t make their way into our class pitches, but they helped clear my mind. When my writing lacked this gritty sincerity, I saw my voice slipping away.

            According to legend, you seemed like a very honest, straightforward kind of guy. You carried yourself with a giant’s stature and a giant’s courage. Deciding that you would serve “the greatest king there was,” you left the king of Canaan after learning he feared the devil. I can’t name anyone I know who would devote themselves to looking for the ruler of hell. Just saying. Soon you encountered a band of marauders (which I discovered also go to Hogwarts and promote African peace in our day). You faithfully served the one who claimed to be the devil himself until he trembled at the mention of Christ. Having no interest in prayer or fasting, you began your life service to Christ at that stream. Whether or not your true life mirrored this pursuit, I can respect your desire for authenticity and purpose. You could not be fake. You would do anything to know truth and let it define your life.

            In my own search for authenticity in Rome as a writer and learner, what did I discover? You might ask. Was I as bold as you? Was I as honest and truth driven? Did I abandon one self for a new self, one river for another? Through interesting conversations with Catholic classmates, neck cramps from the Vatican museum, sweet chills from singing together in the San Carlo basement (or tomb, perhaps, for Elizabeth Canori Mora), my writing did deepen in its honesty. I accepted myself, coming to peace with the Roman-church-writer that I was. I was not radically converted. In fact, I still disagree with all of the differing theology I encountered. Here is my poem I wrote about San Andrea during our last week, one of the three churches from our day’s pitch. I was finally able to confess in a pitch some of the negative feelings I’ve encountered in Rome:

A marble throne for a pope towers in front of me. I feel alone, sown into the fabric of a new-old thing, bible stories grown into gold and marble, all halos, all angels having thrown away their flesh for stone, fully atoned from the shadows of doubters like me. It would be woeful to peel back the layers of them, though I wish to see if skin and blood pulses below. Why do I feel so alone, so far from my God and my home?

Yet in the midst of this, I left with so much more respect for you and for the church history that Protestants can often be disconnected from. I can close my eyes and see glowing stain glass windows, which were originally created to tell stories to those illiterate. I can still feel the sacredness of silence pressing up against my skin, and surreal presence that resonated from the paintings. I see a reflection of God’s artistry in the majesty of your cathedrals. I certainly left Rome with more questions than answers, but I am grateful to have left much of my hostility behind.

This process was my greatest step forward in my writing, which allowed me to dig deeper in other subjects in our final pitches. Ultimately, I am continuing in the journey of truth telling that I’ve learned many writers aspire to. Christopher, I am glad to say that through both of our river dancing, we became more of ourselves. You found your true king, and I found my own faith and writing refined. It is good to become lost and un-lost, over and over again. On to new adventures! Perhaps sometime we will meet again.

Sincerely,

Kendra Sowers