From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Tue Apr 16 2002 - 00:51:34 MDT
I just finished reading a book (mini-stories, vignettes) about Rome.
It's the kind of book that I might have written, but much better
(don't you hate that? :-)) Delightful book, and true, to what I
have learned, so far, about Rome. I post some words from the introduction
because I think that there's some applicability to this group
in the psychological aspects of living immortal lives.
<begin quote>
Imagine being three thousand years old. Suppose by some mysterious
process you had managed to avoid the limitations of mortality, and
year after year you keep going, adding more and more experiences to
your life story until you have no choice but to repeat them because
you have exhausted all possibilities.
You are the very essence of what it means to be human. You have had
more than your share of victories and defeats, triumphs and
tragedies, moments of glory and those of abjection, times when you
wish you had never been born and times when you want to go on
forever. You have loved and lost, have abandoned and been left
behind, been rich and poor, skinny and fat, lived high on the hog
and been forced to scramble for a few morsels of stale bread. You
have seen it all, done it all, regretted it all, and then gone back
and done it all again.
You are la cittą eterna, Rome, the Eternal City.
To live in Rome is to have the capacity to endure everything life
has to offer -- moments of timeless beauty followed by torrents of
ugliness, the bella and the brutta mixed together in a bowl of hot
minestrone that has left nothing out, that encourages you to live
life from a completely different perspective. There is no more
mature place on earth, and that maturity has something to teach you.
Other cities may be older, but Rome still lives its past. Walk
anywhere in the city or the areas surrounding it, and within
minutes you are confronted with the remains of something that could
be up to twenty-five hundred years old, that functioned and was
vital to the daily life of the romani.
Rome is so old that its days of glory, when the empire stretched all
across the Mediterranean and far into Europe, Asia and Africa, ended
well before the development of the Italian language. But by that
time, history had already cast Rome in a leading role. Even if the
stage on which it had starred had long since been taken down, its
Latin culture was carried to the four corners of the earth by the
establishment and dogged vitality of the Roman Catholic Church,
whose theology came to dominate the everyday landscape of the world
like no other institution. It was almost as if the Romans, in their
infinite cleverness, came to see that they no longer needed to bear
the costs of a far-flung empire but would invest their energy in a
religion that would have more lasting effects. Rome would remain the
capo, the boss, while its minions in nearly every other country
would carry out the mission. Its position in the world secure, the
presence of the Church freed the romani to focus on and perfect the
fine art of living well, leaving others to handle the historical
heavy lifting while it devoted itself to the pursuit of pleasure.
The result is a strange anomaly, a sprawling metropolis that feels
like a small town, simply because it no longer has any illusions of
greatness. "Been there, done that" could be the motto of SPQR,
Senatus Populusque Romanus, the name of the city government. Romans
feel no need to prove themselves, to demonstrate to the world that
they still have the ability to command respect, enact their wills,
determine the course of history. Nobody cares about that any longer.
The city's place in history is indelible, and now its inhabitants
want to enjoy Rome's advance age in a manner that befits someone who
is three thousand years old. It's as if, had you lived to reach this
age and had you realized every one of the dreams of your youth, you
had no more worlds to conquer; that your drive, your ambition, your
desire to impress had long since been satisfied, and now you were
unabashedly devoted to the enjoyment of life's everyday pleasures --
eating well, looking good, devoting time to your family, and
accepting the inevitable ups and downs that human existence has no
choice but to offer.
This is Rome and the Romans who live in it, a city and a people of
contrasts and effusion, a place that has lived so many different
lives, in so many different epochs, that all it wants to do is
exist in eternity according to the wisdom of what it has learned.
The lessons are obvious. Life is to be lived passionately,
excessively, publicly -- in bars, restaurants, streets, and piazzas
-- applying charm and style mixed with a healthy respect for
tradition. Romans have big appetites, for theatrical experience as
well as exquisite food.
Ever since I came here for the first time two decades ago, Rome has
been a source of endless fascination to me. It does this to people.
I am by no means the first to fall under its seductive spell. It
offers itself to the appassionato, one who is impassioned, as would
a lover who invites his or her suitor to find out every way in which
the beloved can be admired, reviled, explored, cursed, caressed,
rejected, made love to, and abandoned. I have heard it said on
numerous occasions that it is difficult to leave Rome, that once it
penetrates your consciousness, all other cities, all other places,
every other mode of living is just so lacking, leaving one with the
feeling that, for better or worse, to live in Rome and to be a
romano is to live at the apex of what is most profound about life;
that what it offers in the way of beauty, of sensuality, of
creativity, no other city can match. Even if New York is more
avant-garde, Paris more elegant, San Francisco fresher and more
naturally dramatic, Rome still holds first place when it comes to
utter devotion to pleasure and to the sheer ability to survive. Its
stories are older, more truthful, more instructive and complex. Its
spirit is still intact, and it provides a new wrinkle on the ancient
quest for everlasting youth. As the Eternal City, Rome's eternity
lies in its wisdom. To live here now is to partake of the infinite,
but to be in the present. You learn to separate yourself from
questions of status, glory, ambition, and striving and live as the
Romans do -- in the moment, with style, flair, and panache. The city
has been host to myriad lives since the days many, many years ago
when a nomadic tribe settled on the Palantine Hill, facing the
Tiber, and became the city of Rome. Not one of those souls has
managed to cheat nature. All have returned to the place from which
they sprung.
<end quote>
from _As the Romans Do_, by Alan Epstein, 2000, Harper Collins.
page 1-4.
-- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "Take time to consider. The smallest point may be the most essential." Sherlock Holmes (The Adventure of the Red Circle)
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