I walked to a call shop, internet cafe the first night in...my only intention for the night. Ambition dead, no desire to explore. But walking home, I found myself immediately lost. When I spun a corner, the Coliseum sat before me, lit in distant hues of blue and purple and green. I was scared, almost petrified as a honking car narrowly missed slamming me, breaking his car into pieces.
But it wasn't the car...
I wasn't ready for it, not immediately...a city I grew up to revere so precisely. It's daunting, the moment truth and imagination meet, are thrust upon compromise. These moments have struck frequently over the past 7 weeks, but never like that...and never that heavy.
It grew smaller as I approached. When I reached out and touched it's coarse and cold stone, I couldn't help but imagine the echoes it once housed. I couldn't help imagining a city in its golden era, on the frontier of civiliztion...completely unaware of what they would become to a world not to be born for distant ages.
...
After that first night, the rest of my time in this city was spent in an uninspired droll. I was hungover with mononucleosis and depression and had no idea where it was stirring from.
I wanted to bury this city, bury the past of all our worlds. Bury this world content to live in the sunlight of the dead and dying. I wanted to run away from everything I am, everything I wanted to be, find dark spots of thought and exploration, find minds without limits, minds that put mine to shame and could send me somewhere far, far away...some great and astounding secret...some city in the clouds that leaves all this behind...
And that was all...the great Rome.
