Rome - Beyond Cornfields & Cabernet

Italy - Beyond Cornfields & Cabernet
Shirley Moyer

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Looking over the thirteenth floor balcony and stretching left, I could see the Vatican looming like Kilroy over the ancient sycamores. I couldn’t believe I was in Rome. It wasn’t a dream. The bright pink oleanders and giant yellow sunflowers surprised me (I never thought of them growing outside of the USA). It was easy to overlook the graffiti, as disgusting as it is in America, it seemed half respectable on all the brick walls, like monogrammed drapery.

Tomorrow we would take the tour, see the great Vatican and all the jewels of the city. But today, now, I would inhale the flavor of Rome's surrounding country.

Much to my surprise were fields of corn - which was food for their animals, and acres and acres of baled hay leading to medieval towers peering in the distance like lords surveying their possessions. Patches of brown harvested wheat were quilts of effort rising to meet the Abbeys perched on the hilltops.

Massive fields of sunflowers, in full bloom, looked as if they'd been painted with French's mustard. Tan, shoe box homes, clustered like old friends from old times, and from a distance, all of them seemed to look alike; adobe, some type of clay, and the roofs, a soft romantic rose color. I imagined their comfy beds and the smell of garlic, and the bread ready to lift from the oven.

Ah, but Venice, where everything was stolen from somewhere else, or so they say. Gargoyles look down from intricately designed buildings over the cobblestone walks where a man with a cart of round loaves of rock spends the afternoon repairing the streets on his hands and knees with a chisel and hammer. For a moment I felt a hundred years old.

How could anyone not be a lover in Venice? It reeks of love. The gondolas meander the canals through the city with, strange as it seems, signals of redlights on the corners of the old, old, brick buildings growing from the water. Thick, dark wooden doors with rusty hinges slip by as we drift past, and we laugh at the boatsman knowing when to duck his head under the approaching low bridges.

I fell asleep that night with the visions of the day and the charm of Italy locked in my heart, forever.

The following morning, it was tour time.

Walking the cobblestone streets, I watched bands of people being led by tour guides waving scarves, flags, and umbrellas — anything but a rolled newspaper, to distinguish themselves among the crowd.

Tour guides are an interesting lot. I’ve come to believe they’re history professors in see-through, gauzey skirts, and white, wrinkled slacks with scuffed, leather attaches hanging from their shoulders, while their right arm signals to the world, “Follow Me.” They’re marvels of knowledge, knowing whose bones were buried under the great buildings; they speak of them as if they were relatives — maybe they are. Tour guides are local historian geniuses in love with Italy. So am I.

Archaeologists, Ruins, Wine. If I was awestruck from the never-ending cornfields and free-flowing Cabernet, I was dumbstruck and thought of myself a gladiator as I walked across the center of the Coliseum. This was the Yankee and Dodger Stadium, the Metropolitan Opera House, the Smithsonian, and Steve Wynn’s Bilagio rolled into a dilapidated ruin in the throes of reconstruction. I looked up from the center where hundreds of warriors entertained families by dying. It was difficult to realize the enormity of the historical events. I could only imagine Russell Crowe playing his part in the Gladiator. I could not imagine the heat of the sun, the jeering crowds, the barbarism and gore of the ‘old’ Rome days. Perhaps, being a hopeless romantic, I didn’t want to distort what I wanted to believe was beauty.

If you haven’t been to Italy, you may not understand. No picture, movie or storybook will allow you the true privilege of seeing or smelling, but mostly, feeling, Italy. It’s like a layer of frosting hidden under the many layers of cake, old fruitcake, with fruit you have never seen before.

It isn’t only the charm. It’s size — the overwhelming immensity of the Basilica, awesome cathedrals that inspired this writer beyond words. The murals, paintings, statues; it isn’t the Venetian in Las Vegas, it’s Rome, and nothing can compare to it. It isn’t only the fact hundreds of little Smart cars maneuver like gypsy ants and people are everywhere, walking, and none of them are fat. It’s something I can’t explain. Beyond the graffiti-covered old walls —it has to do with time. It has to do with effort. I never realized what ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ meant until I saw archaeologists on their knees carefully brushing their treasures. I’d seen ruins in Macau; it’s hardly worth mentioning. Here, in Rome, all of the country was like a garden of crying old bones wanting to rise from the earth and be born again. It’s a place where everyone knows wherever you dig a hole you are guaranteed to find something from the past. I could hardly contain myself from buying a shovel.

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