The essay that’s due tomorrow is
finished except for a final brief read through before printing it out. I keep
telling myself that a better plan would be to finish the first draft a week
before the deadline so at least there’s a week for reflection and changes, but
no, there are always other things to distract me sufficiently before getting
down to it.
I’m sitting in the Giardino degli
Aranci – a very appropriate name as the garden is full of orange trees – on the
Aventine hill next to Santa Sabina church. Timothy Radcliffe, the Dominican,
mentions Santa Sabina, in his recent book, Why go to Church? as his favourite church. He writes, ‘It was being
built when St Augustine died, after the sack of Rome by the Vandals, and was
finished in 432.’
Oranges like gleaming jewels
amongst the dark foliage, oranges lying in the grass and beneath the trees
there’s a group of eight or ten senior citizens from the US of A about to
depart the garden on their (What are they called? They must have a name?)
battery-driven modes of transport with two parallel wheels and a platform
between the wheels on which the passenger/driver stands. There’s a vertical
“broomstick” topped with a handlebar by which they steer, stop and start. The
seniors all have identical blue crash helmets and are led by two young and
rather glamorous Italians who walk fast to keep up with their speeding-off
charges.
Looking out over the city I
notice that I can almost take in (without moving head or eyes) the distance
from the dome of St Peter’s to Il Vittoriano, the massive slab of white marble,
topped with chariots and galloping horses. According to the Lonely Planet
guide, it’s known locally as ‘the typewriter’ and if you picture one of those
massive typewriters from the first half of the twentieth century then it’s a
very accurate image. They are two massive edifices representing two sorts of
power; the secular power of the new Italian nation facing the ancient holy
power of the Vatican. It was to be sixty years of facing each other before an
understanding was thrashed out between the Vatican and the fascist government.
I’m also watching the clouds
building up and wondering when and how heavy the rain will be, and the answer
turns out to be half an hour by which time I’ve walked on and into the maze of
Trastevere where I duck into the Almost Corner Bookshop. It’s a tiny, old-fashioned sort of
bookshop from before the time of Waterstones; an English bookshop that’s been
serving the needs of the English-reading population of Rome for the last
seventeen years.
This letter started on Sunday and
finished on Thursday! Now we have a break from classes; a week of retreat and
then into Easter; one of those shifts in the heavens. There’s a Happy Easter to
say, though it doesn’t quite get to the power of the event; the lightness in
the phrase that rather suggests mixing up Easter bunnies and the Passion.