11 February 2007

A New Rome



I am not exactly between worlds this morning. I know exactly where I am, though I wish I were elsewhere. There is a work project spread across one of the mute computers. Comments are due this morning, and I have some vitriol to burn off before attempting it.

There is the matter of what was on the note in Mr. Roosevelt's pocket that day in November of 1941, and why it is still considered a state secret by the heirs and assigns of Mr. Churchill's government.

I won't solve that one this morning. If I kept birds in Big Pink, they would be flapping their wings, signaling they natural desire to fly away from the weather that is coming. The Saskatchewan Express is bringing the threat of heavy snow in this direction, paying us back for the mild weather the jet stream gave us over the holidays.

The lakes are still unfrozen, and they are giving up their moisture to the cold dry air as heavy snow all across the Midwest, and now it is coming here. I would give almost anything for a seat at a sidewalks cafe in my shirtsleeves, with the warm breeze to tousle my hair. But perhaps the snow  will damp out the whiff of corruption that wafts across the Potomac for a while.

It is a trade-off. I received a note in the mail that was more interesting than work, and easier to approach than the Mystery of the Presidential Pocket, which perhaps is better left for the Hardy Boys. The note called for the erection of a New Washington unspoiled by graft and greed, a New Rome to be constructed in a magnificent valley in the West.

I am a man of low, if practical, political standards. I suspect it is that faint odor that attracts the vultures to the city, first sniffed at Buzzard's Point at the confluence of the Anacostia and the Potomac, Washington's Tiber. Thence north to where the gold is poured from the rostrum of those who dispense the wealth of the Republic. The smell is much more pungent there.

It becomes unbearable in the summer, and forces us into the air-conditioning that removes it urgency.

Not so in the older capital of the world. I was sitting on the plaza in front of my favorite building in Rome, the magnificent Pantheon. Largest free-standing dome in the world when constructed, and it still might be, for all I know.

In the days of the unpleasantness in the Balkans, and in the days before when I was briefly a Med sailor, I had several opportunities to pass through the City.

Of all the vistas I found on my strolls across the old and new landscape, Pantheon was the one I liked best. There was nothing better than a cold beer after a long trek and an overload of culture. White tablecloth, a brussietta , perhaps, at a table in the Piazza della Rotunda. An obelisk that once belonged to Great Ramses of Egypt frames the view, with the columns of the Pantheon wrapped around by the hill of rubble that was the old city.

The facade of the home of all the gods was perfectly intact long past the time of the Caesars and the Visigoths and the rest of the parade of pygmies who claimed the dusty mantle of the giants who transformed the Eternal City from wood to marble.

I would crack the tattered guidebook that I carried in the back pocket of my jeans and leaf through it as the muscles of my legs un-knot. “ Commissioned by Marcus Agrippa, restored by Domitian, and subsequently rebuilt by Hadrian (who added the dome) before being turned into a church in the early 7th century by Pope Boniface IV. The building's sole source of light is the opening at the dome's apex (the oculus); according to popular legend, this formed the base for the bronze pine-cone that is now in the Vatican's 'Pigna' courtyard, where it is used as a fountain.”

There are a couple Italians buried within, I have discovered, following the rays of light from the Ocula, lesser luminaries of later times. The painter Raphael and the first King Vittorio Emanuele can be seen on the perimeter walls.

Michelangelo once proclaimed that the place was designed by angels and not men.

The bronze ornaments and fittings to the pagan temple almost made it to us- stopped by a hereditary religious ruler of a celibate order, who would pass the Mitre of heaven on to his son. He thought he would stand as mighty for the ages as great Augustus. Bernini stripped the bronze to use for a project commissioned by the Barberini Pope; casting for cannons to protect the Castle San Angelo, perched atop the foundations of Hadrian's Tomb, he who placed the dome atop Pantheon.

What did the average Roman say with a shrug? "The Pantheon. Survived the barbarians, but not the Barberini."

If we have a need for a New Washington, I hope that what is left behind has a decent view from an outdoor table in the delicious days of Spring.

Perhaps the crumbling columns of the Jefferson Monument? It would be a pleasant visual quotation. But if the power has moved on, I seriously doubt that anyone would come here, regardless of the view, or the brussietta.

Cpyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com


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