Reflection on life in Rome

As I was lying awake in bed the other night listening to all of the city, I was thinking about how easy it is where we come from to hide away.  Often in Seattle I slide through the day without speaking to hardly anyone outside from my own small family and close circle of friends and colleagues, possibly one clerk at one large grocery store.  But living in the heart of Rome the interaction with all of humanity is inescapable.  And maybe this is true when living in any large city— but also maybe not.   The rythym of the day here includes interactions with fruit vendors, bread-bakers, fish mongers.  I walk out the door and there are artists, nuns, old men smoking cigars, and someone immediately asking if I would like to buy a cup of fresh watermelon.  Everyone is a vendor of something— art, fruit, religion, bread, music— and they all passionately want to grab your attention.

And I love it.  In Seattle you buy fish at the supermarket, and no one cares.  There is complete separation, aside from at the farmer’s market, between production and consumption.   There are invisible walls.   And I think it adds to the loneliness of our society.   

I’m not saying it is always that great here.  With the Campo de’Fiori in our front yard, we are having to adjust to this pulse of humanity that is literally non-stop.   But there is a great comfort in living in this urban space, and strangely a sense of great peace.  

I’m going to have to reflect more on this.   As someone who loves green space and nature, it’s a foreign feeling to find myself comforted by this excessively urban life (Rome quite literally is city built upon city built upon city).   We are far from the forests of the great Pacific North West, and yet it feels as if we are in a different kind of old growth forest.   

Maybe that is going to far.  Maybe it’s time for [another] gelato break.   

ciao.   

-Rachel