Efren in Rome Part III- Take a Walk but Don't Forget your Camera!

It’s always fun to get a chance to walk around a beautiful place and snap a picture here, a picture there. But when you live in the city the experience begins to transform like the flavor of a pretzel with mustard, dijon mustard, honey mustard, any mustard really. When you live in the city, many times you take monumental grandeur for granted, well I speak from experience, having lived in Pasadena for twenty years before coming to appreciate the Rose Bowl, the Civic Center, the Arroyo Seco, etc. My goal is to capture the “first impression” or “love/hate at first sight” conglomeration of emotions before they slowly dissolve into routine buildings on the way to classes.

Less than a hundred feet away from the Colosseum lies the Arc of Constantine.

Keeping the goal in mind, I also realize that Rome is a monumental attraction in of itself and this is prime time for tourism. Spanish, French, Greek, and yes, even American tourists flood the streets morning to night and have been part of my first exposure to this city. I notice that many tourists here are similar to tourists in Los Angeles and even New Orleans. Walking around with their heads up, necks arched so as to catch every detail of the roof lines of the buildings, and what they don’t cache in their minds gets saved indefinitely in their cameras. When I say they I, of course, must include myself because I go about my day in the exact same way. I walk through the cavernous streets as if at the bottom of a valley that is adorned with beautiful, enchanting, spiritually stimulating ornamentation. With obvious look-where-I’m-going glances at the streets and oncoming traffic, I try to activate the photographic memory I once wished to have after reading a Nancy Drew book in the fourth grade. But it seems that many of my birthday cake candle wishes have yet to come true, so I rely on my camera and my normal, non-capture-spooky-bad-guy memory, for now at least.

Took the time to take a "postcard picture"

So I walk, and I look, and I shoot pictures. Stopping to calm the running of my mind to rest underneath the shade that these buildings, these structures of architecture, this history provides. At times, I become overcome by emotion, it comes on slowly, like ivy over a brick wall, but the end result is always beautiful. A feeling of euphoria. A feeling so high above the clouds, it seems to never end. It’s peaceful, it’s calm, it’s forgiving, it shoots throughout every single part of my nervous system. I have begun to experience the genuine feeling of reality through this first week abroad with no need or temptation to alter it.  

Altar of the Fatherland