I have a theme song for my post today.
I'm a sucker for apocalyptic literature, so Jacopone making big references to the Book of Revelation (and then *gasp* changing it) caught my attention. In poem 50, The Battle Against the Antichrist, I know that we talked a little about this in class, but the scene in there is SO MUCH LIKE the scene in revelation where the serpent-dragon-Satan thing comes up out of the sky, sweeps a third of them out of the sky and drinks all the water in the river. Except, in the Bible version, Mary gives birth to Jesus just in time (talk about epic battle scene--the angels are trying to fly her away from Satan and the woman is HAVING A BABY), and that power defeats the serpent. Yeah, he takes some sinners down with him, but that's to be expected and the world is saved.
In Jacopone's version, there is no light. At all. Not even from Mary and Jesus's heads. It's completely dark. The moon's not even out. You get the sense that the sun is there, but nothing's happening. It's just there as kind of this still presence, and you know that it's there and you know that it has to be providing some light, but that's not the point. The point is that the sun is just this passive thing, and it's the moon that takes the active role. The sun just sits there. The moon's dressed for a funeral and darkens everything. It almost seems to overpower the sun, which is all kinds of ridiculous, because seriously, when does the moon ever do that? The order is wrong, and by setting up this extremely uncomfortable setting (as well as referring to a battle we're used to winning as a losing one), Jacopone gets our attention. THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG HERE. THE CHURCH IS EXTREMELY WRONG HERE. The focus here isn't on a powerless God; it's on the fact that the Church has taken God pretty much completely out of the equation. He's still there in name, but Jacopone doesn't see God's presence in the Church's actions or intentions. The Church's power is so great that it's sucking God out of other people's lives too, and they're left in a position as helpless as the one that Jacopone describes. The goodness is this great light that can't do anything. We even forget that it shines.
Jacopone goes on to describe three traps people fall into. There's three options and none of them are good. We're used to at least one of them being good--or at least one of them being slightly more desirable than the others--because we're used to the Bible. Or I'm used to the Bible, and Jacopone's audience would have been used to the Bible. Most people, says Jacopone, fall to greed. That's the big problem in the Church, and it really is. The Church has become this political force where people make lots of money--even more so in Jacopone's eyes, since he's totally advocating for a primary Francis of Assisi way of life. Then he mentions what I talked about in my last post, which was the vanity of knowledge. So essentially, if greed doesn't get you, learning things and thinking you're better than everyone else and getting lost in being all "knowledgable" will.
Then Jacopone mentions this third option that I didn't quite understand. It's like...if you get past the first two, then you're lost to this want to perform magic and miracles. I wasn't quite sure how to interpret that. Could it be a want to be Christ? Or a want to extend beyond human bounds? Or maybe it's a fame thing? Either way, I guess it leads back to the first two, where you end up turning away from God to follow these things. God becomes, again, like in his first image, a passive force in your life. He exists, and you do things in his name (sort of), but he becomes a circumstance rather than a focus and a reason. That's what Jacopone critiques here (in a rather fantastic fashion, in my extremely humble opinion).
Jacopone gets nicer at the end, in kind of a vain hope (but a hope, I noticed, nonetheless) that people will be able to defeat the three temptations and end up in a good and functional (and active) relationship with God. This is pretty early on as far as his poems go, so I guess he might not have been very angry yet, but yeah. Even if the hope is sarcastic, it's still present. Jacopone mentions that confiding in our strength is wrong, so I was wondering where strength comes from. Does it come from God? I think that's where Jacopone thinks it comes from, and that's one of the reasons why he's riding everyone so hard about this.
Also, in answer to Jacob's question in class the other day, Christ had to die and it was said that he was going to die, but I don't think people exactly understood the fact that he had to die because of all the bad stuff everyone had done in the past to turn away from God and, essentially, love. That's why you got the blame game instead of people kind of checking their lives.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Post 1: What is Idle Knowledge?
Jacopone is kind of a rock star.
Reading the poems assigned, I had so many things to discuss about all of them, but the thing that stuck out most to me is Jacopone consistently referring to two forms of knowledge: learning vs pious devotion, or true knowledge vs university knowledge.
First, this sticks out to me because, you know, I go to a university. So that got me thinking about what I was learning in class. Was that knowledge true, or was it something that wasn't? Jacopone seems to think that there is learning that falls in line with God and the way he wants us to live and learning that takes away from God. God must be a present figure in your learning and knowledge. This is true. Sometimes, knowledge creates pride. When I was a little girl, "know-it-all" or "Smart Alec" were among the worst of insults you could get (you know, besides "Poopy Head"). Knowledge is supposed to benefit yourself and others. It's not supposed to be something to cut yourself off from others or put yourself above them.
This passage, in 34 (ON THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TRUE AND COUNTERFEIT LOVE, ACQUIRED AND INFUSED KNOWLEDGE), stuck out to me the most:
"Acquired knowledge, however long its meditation,
Cannot engender properly ordered love.
Infused knowledge, as soon as it touches you, fills you
With burning love, makes peace between you and God.
It makes you humble, edifies your neighbor,
And gives you knowledge of the truth."
Well, hey there, Jesuit values. Going to a Jesuit liberal arts school, you kind of get this sense of "learning for the sake of learning," but you also get that learning serves as a tool to help other people (as well as kind of a cool path to self-fulfillment through helping others). Through knowledge, you pursue a higher truth about the world that's not as much of a cut-and-dry means to an end as perhaps knowledge solely for the sake of being rich.
For knowledge to work for Jacopone, it must be selfless, and that wasn't something he was seeing a lot of when he was living. People with knowledge and in higher offices got paid more, and they were being very corrupt. Popes were rich and getting corrupt. Jacopone didn't see the aspect of their offices where they helped other people--at all, it seems. His solution was to get rid of them and to hope in vain that people would eventually turn and follow the path to true knowledge, that people would ultimately turn away from pride and follow God.
The papacy did eventually clear up (and by eventually, I'm talking more like "recently"), but learning even more about how corrupted the papacy was, I can see how hopeless it must have seemed for poor Jacopone. It's hard to stick it to the man when the man runs like...everything.
Reading the poems assigned, I had so many things to discuss about all of them, but the thing that stuck out most to me is Jacopone consistently referring to two forms of knowledge: learning vs pious devotion, or true knowledge vs university knowledge.
First, this sticks out to me because, you know, I go to a university. So that got me thinking about what I was learning in class. Was that knowledge true, or was it something that wasn't? Jacopone seems to think that there is learning that falls in line with God and the way he wants us to live and learning that takes away from God. God must be a present figure in your learning and knowledge. This is true. Sometimes, knowledge creates pride. When I was a little girl, "know-it-all" or "Smart Alec" were among the worst of insults you could get (you know, besides "Poopy Head"). Knowledge is supposed to benefit yourself and others. It's not supposed to be something to cut yourself off from others or put yourself above them.
This passage, in 34 (ON THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TRUE AND COUNTERFEIT LOVE, ACQUIRED AND INFUSED KNOWLEDGE), stuck out to me the most:
"Acquired knowledge, however long its meditation,
Cannot engender properly ordered love.
Infused knowledge, as soon as it touches you, fills you
With burning love, makes peace between you and God.
It makes you humble, edifies your neighbor,
And gives you knowledge of the truth."
Well, hey there, Jesuit values. Going to a Jesuit liberal arts school, you kind of get this sense of "learning for the sake of learning," but you also get that learning serves as a tool to help other people (as well as kind of a cool path to self-fulfillment through helping others). Through knowledge, you pursue a higher truth about the world that's not as much of a cut-and-dry means to an end as perhaps knowledge solely for the sake of being rich.
For knowledge to work for Jacopone, it must be selfless, and that wasn't something he was seeing a lot of when he was living. People with knowledge and in higher offices got paid more, and they were being very corrupt. Popes were rich and getting corrupt. Jacopone didn't see the aspect of their offices where they helped other people--at all, it seems. His solution was to get rid of them and to hope in vain that people would eventually turn and follow the path to true knowledge, that people would ultimately turn away from pride and follow God.
The papacy did eventually clear up (and by eventually, I'm talking more like "recently"), but learning even more about how corrupted the papacy was, I can see how hopeless it must have seemed for poor Jacopone. It's hard to stick it to the man when the man runs like...everything.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Last Day Reflections
Everyone else's last day isn't really mine, but I planned on getting the most out of Rome today so I can spend time with everyone and recover tomorrow. Mostly, I just visited sites I loved. Like the Disney Store.
Of course, I visited Populo and walked up and down Corso for a bit. Today wasn't about seeing sites. Today was about reflection. And there's a lot that I learned in Rome--the majority of it has gone into this blog, and I'm very glad I made it so that I can come back to look at it every once in a while.
Coming to Italy has really reawakened my love of culture and also a confidence in myself that I hadn't really seen a lot of this first year in college. It was hard for me to be myself this year because I guess I was just trying to figure out who I was when I wasn't around familiar things. I like the person I see though, and that's good. I really want to put more of different cultures and different people into my studies, and that probably wouldn't have happened without this trip, so I'm very thankful for that.
I've gotten to know so many awesome people on this trip and have heard so many stories. It's only been a month! But I almost wish I was in this kind of situation more often because when people face things that are challenging, they seem to be more open, and you learn more things about people. I have experienced pretty much every emotion under the sun in this country, and I'm not really an emotional person. But I definitely got the experience i wanted, and I feel like I've grown a lot. :)
Of course, I visited Populo and walked up and down Corso for a bit. Today wasn't about seeing sites. Today was about reflection. And there's a lot that I learned in Rome--the majority of it has gone into this blog, and I'm very glad I made it so that I can come back to look at it every once in a while.
Coming to Italy has really reawakened my love of culture and also a confidence in myself that I hadn't really seen a lot of this first year in college. It was hard for me to be myself this year because I guess I was just trying to figure out who I was when I wasn't around familiar things. I like the person I see though, and that's good. I really want to put more of different cultures and different people into my studies, and that probably wouldn't have happened without this trip, so I'm very thankful for that.
I've gotten to know so many awesome people on this trip and have heard so many stories. It's only been a month! But I almost wish I was in this kind of situation more often because when people face things that are challenging, they seem to be more open, and you learn more things about people. I have experienced pretty much every emotion under the sun in this country, and I'm not really an emotional person. But I definitely got the experience i wanted, and I feel like I've grown a lot. :)
Tuscany
Tuscany is beautiful. It's glorious.
As long as you keep that in your head for the rest of this post, we're good. :)
Assisi blew my mind. It was such a nice and small town. We walked inside San Francesco and just...I don't know. We were all down by his tomb and people just started to kneel and...pray? Meditate? I don't know what they were doing, but it was clear that a sense of peace had come over us in Assisi. We saw the relics of his life and learned about how he started the Franciscans. He really was trying to get back to old school and live the way Jesus did, a very poverty-laden life, doing good works and adhering very strictly to this poor life.
Antonia and I climbed a mountain at night and looked at a castle and at the stars. It was quite peaceful, and I loved climbing by sunset. We hung out by Santa Chiara (where there was a party in the street).
Something that I noticed while I was in the church there was that there were a lot of portrayals of Jesus and God holding the ball. The ball, held by the Roman goddess Fortuna, is a symbol of fate and its instability (the ball rolls) as well as its everlasting qualities (fate always exists because there's a circle). I talked to some people in our class about it, and Jacob suggested that it just signified the universe. Which I suppose has the same kind of universal quality as fate. It gave me something to think about.
In Siena, we learned about the horse race and how that's actually the first scene of Quantum of Solace. We visited the Museo di Civico and the town square equivalent (it's a lot like the Forum in Rome). There was a map of the world on the wall that replaced frescos that had been there before. We also saw Mary in Majesty, Christ holding a scroll made of actual parchment because artists back then were awesome. IN the Citizen Center in Museo Civico, we found St. Catherine of Siena on the wall holding a lily. The picture also featured two faces, representing the Old and New Testament.
The most mind-blowing thing about the picture was that it was made out of fresh plaster, meaning that it had to be done in a very short time. Several people worked on the incredibly detailed picture, and a head per person was considered a day's work.
After that, we headed into Sala del Pace, which portrayed the Allegory of Good and Bad Government. I looked out the window while I was there and saw boys flag twirling in the street! That appears to be a Siena thing. :) Back to the picture though. The picture's main idea was that a city built on justice is peaceful. You walked in under the figure representing Justice and sat under it. The good government contained temperance, providence, prudence, fortitude, magnanimity, and then justice again. Ropes came down from Justice's hands to Concord to the people and finally the string ended at the ruler. The government kept in peace had a peaceful city and countryside. People were happy and trading and working and it was all good.
The bad government side had figures that all had like, demon ears or something. The government was led by a tyrant surrounded by avarice, vain glory, and pride. The city was full of war.
Also, there was a picture on the wall of Nero, showing that Nero was a tyrant.
Well, it implied it.
Anyway, we also found some pointy hats in the pictures referring to the Chinese that may have been in Siena at the time.
We had a party for Jeff that night, because it was his birthday. Also, in Assisi and Siena, I had bathtubs and took the first two baths I'd taken in a long time.
I didn't take too many notes in Florence just because I recognized that it was time to sit down and just enjoy life. Good sites I saw were a tour guide carrying a mop (awesome!)
We saw the Vasari picture of the six Tuscan poets. And then we went to the Uffizi and saw so many things that I can't even put them here. I did, however, see my buddy Jean-Marc Nattier and some of his pictures as well as more female deities holding balls, just like Fortuna that I identified as Fortuna. Also, I was absolutely in love with Spring. I just sat there and stared at it.
Beautiful Views!
As long as you keep that in your head for the rest of this post, we're good. :)
Assisi blew my mind. It was such a nice and small town. We walked inside San Francesco and just...I don't know. We were all down by his tomb and people just started to kneel and...pray? Meditate? I don't know what they were doing, but it was clear that a sense of peace had come over us in Assisi. We saw the relics of his life and learned about how he started the Franciscans. He really was trying to get back to old school and live the way Jesus did, a very poverty-laden life, doing good works and adhering very strictly to this poor life.
Antonia and I climbed a mountain at night and looked at a castle and at the stars. It was quite peaceful, and I loved climbing by sunset. We hung out by Santa Chiara (where there was a party in the street).
Something that I noticed while I was in the church there was that there were a lot of portrayals of Jesus and God holding the ball. The ball, held by the Roman goddess Fortuna, is a symbol of fate and its instability (the ball rolls) as well as its everlasting qualities (fate always exists because there's a circle). I talked to some people in our class about it, and Jacob suggested that it just signified the universe. Which I suppose has the same kind of universal quality as fate. It gave me something to think about.
In Siena, we learned about the horse race and how that's actually the first scene of Quantum of Solace. We visited the Museo di Civico and the town square equivalent (it's a lot like the Forum in Rome). There was a map of the world on the wall that replaced frescos that had been there before. We also saw Mary in Majesty, Christ holding a scroll made of actual parchment because artists back then were awesome. IN the Citizen Center in Museo Civico, we found St. Catherine of Siena on the wall holding a lily. The picture also featured two faces, representing the Old and New Testament.
The most mind-blowing thing about the picture was that it was made out of fresh plaster, meaning that it had to be done in a very short time. Several people worked on the incredibly detailed picture, and a head per person was considered a day's work.
After that, we headed into Sala del Pace, which portrayed the Allegory of Good and Bad Government. I looked out the window while I was there and saw boys flag twirling in the street! That appears to be a Siena thing. :) Back to the picture though. The picture's main idea was that a city built on justice is peaceful. You walked in under the figure representing Justice and sat under it. The good government contained temperance, providence, prudence, fortitude, magnanimity, and then justice again. Ropes came down from Justice's hands to Concord to the people and finally the string ended at the ruler. The government kept in peace had a peaceful city and countryside. People were happy and trading and working and it was all good.
The bad government side had figures that all had like, demon ears or something. The government was led by a tyrant surrounded by avarice, vain glory, and pride. The city was full of war.
Also, there was a picture on the wall of Nero, showing that Nero was a tyrant.
Well, it implied it.
Anyway, we also found some pointy hats in the pictures referring to the Chinese that may have been in Siena at the time.
We had a party for Jeff that night, because it was his birthday. Also, in Assisi and Siena, I had bathtubs and took the first two baths I'd taken in a long time.
I didn't take too many notes in Florence just because I recognized that it was time to sit down and just enjoy life. Good sites I saw were a tour guide carrying a mop (awesome!)
We saw the Vasari picture of the six Tuscan poets. And then we went to the Uffizi and saw so many things that I can't even put them here. I did, however, see my buddy Jean-Marc Nattier and some of his pictures as well as more female deities holding balls, just like Fortuna that I identified as Fortuna. Also, I was absolutely in love with Spring. I just sat there and stared at it.
Beautiful Views!
INSANE IN ASSISI 2011!
"Empty bottles? Well, that's a waste." - Carlyn
Katie: And here we are, shootin' the shit about New Orleans Catholic schools.
"We don't have a St. Cletus! You have a St. Cletus!"
"You're from Maryland. God, you're weird."
"ALICE HAS GOT THE KEY!"
"They're laughing out found on the inside!" - Kristin
"Chris is starting to remind me of my cat. IT'S A COMPLIMENT." - Heather
"Is that pole wood?" - Jeff
"That taxi across the street is lovin' it." - Heather
"I'll see you in heaven!" - the adorable tour group staying in Assisi
"You sat in the train today and did iPod shuffle with your voice!" - Michelle Rau
"What sorority are you in?"
"Alpha Chi Omega." - Kristin
"What does that mean?"
"I'm so sorry--it was just your face!" - TerTer
"It's on Wikipedia!" - Michelle Rau
"FLABBY THIGH BOLO."
"JK LUPD BOLO LOL NBD CIAO." - Lauren
TerTer and Othello...
"ADHD thing going on."
"She put something in my coffee." - Michelle
"OH GOODNESS GRACIOUS." - Jeff
"They had to eventually dynamite me to put an end to my reign of terror!" - Sebass, on playing Hungry Shark on Kathryn's iPad
"That kid is trying to offer his mother's breast to that dead guy!" - Sebass
"THAT GUY. WHY IS HE NAKED?" - Sebass
"THE BABY OF JUSTICE WILL PISS ON YOU!" - Sebass
"I do a dance when I pull up my pants." - Kristin
"Jeff, do you have a question about shit?" - Sebass
Sensual washing soap...
"Alpha Chi Omega? Looks like a bladder and ovaries."
"IT'S THE NUN SLAP."
"Lay that **** in there good." - Lauren
"He's going to be prom king of Italy!" - Katie
"BRICKS BRICK BRICK AND MORE ******* BRICKS." - Lauren
"I drank nothing but wine for the last twelve hours."
"Reel it in. It ain't yo birthday no more."
"It's like a gingerbread cathedral!" - Antonia
"That's why I became a ninja." - Sebass
"I'm so bad at eating!" - Antonia
"Holy ****!" - TerTer
"Are you trying to get us drunk?" - Antonia
"No, I'm trying to get me sober!" - Heather
Katie: And here we are, shootin' the shit about New Orleans Catholic schools.
"We don't have a St. Cletus! You have a St. Cletus!"
"You're from Maryland. God, you're weird."
"ALICE HAS GOT THE KEY!"
"They're laughing out found on the inside!" - Kristin
"Chris is starting to remind me of my cat. IT'S A COMPLIMENT." - Heather
"Is that pole wood?" - Jeff
"That taxi across the street is lovin' it." - Heather
"I'll see you in heaven!" - the adorable tour group staying in Assisi
"You sat in the train today and did iPod shuffle with your voice!" - Michelle Rau
"What sorority are you in?"
"Alpha Chi Omega." - Kristin
"What does that mean?"
"I'm so sorry--it was just your face!" - TerTer
"It's on Wikipedia!" - Michelle Rau
"FLABBY THIGH BOLO."
"JK LUPD BOLO LOL NBD CIAO." - Lauren
TerTer and Othello...
"ADHD thing going on."
"She put something in my coffee." - Michelle
"OH GOODNESS GRACIOUS." - Jeff
"They had to eventually dynamite me to put an end to my reign of terror!" - Sebass, on playing Hungry Shark on Kathryn's iPad
"That kid is trying to offer his mother's breast to that dead guy!" - Sebass
"THAT GUY. WHY IS HE NAKED?" - Sebass
"THE BABY OF JUSTICE WILL PISS ON YOU!" - Sebass
"I do a dance when I pull up my pants." - Kristin
"Jeff, do you have a question about shit?" - Sebass
Sensual washing soap...
"Alpha Chi Omega? Looks like a bladder and ovaries."
"IT'S THE NUN SLAP."
"Lay that **** in there good." - Lauren
"He's going to be prom king of Italy!" - Katie
"BRICKS BRICK BRICK AND MORE ******* BRICKS." - Lauren
"I drank nothing but wine for the last twelve hours."
"Reel it in. It ain't yo birthday no more."
"It's like a gingerbread cathedral!" - Antonia
"That's why I became a ninja." - Sebass
"I'm so bad at eating!" - Antonia
"Holy ****!" - TerTer
"Are you trying to get us drunk?" - Antonia
"No, I'm trying to get me sober!" - Heather
Papal Audience Day!!!
We had a papal audience today! I wasn't feeling that well but I really wanted to have the audience, so we all got up and headed to the Vatican. It was really cool because there were these little kids who sang and they did the readings in so many languages! I looooooove languages.
Pictures!
After that and the heat, I went back to my room and slept for the rest of the day.
In a rather hilarious turn of events, while I was packing in my room for our Tuscany adventure, this girl came up to my door.
Girl: Hey, we're all going out tonight. Want to come? *pause while she looks at my t-shirt and shorts* Is that what you're wearing? That's cute.
Me: *blank stare conveying I have never met you before in my life*
Girl: Oh wait. You're not Lisa. *walks away*
WHAT?
Pictures!
After that and the heat, I went back to my room and slept for the rest of the day.
In a rather hilarious turn of events, while I was packing in my room for our Tuscany adventure, this girl came up to my door.
Girl: Hey, we're all going out tonight. Want to come? *pause while she looks at my t-shirt and shorts* Is that what you're wearing? That's cute.
Me: *blank stare conveying I have never met you before in my life*
Girl: Oh wait. You're not Lisa. *walks away*
WHAT?
The June 21 Blog
I only went to one place, and it made me feel kind of not adequate, but I really wanted to see Maria Trastevere before i left Rome, so I trekked there today. It took me a while to find, and my directions that I typed into my iPhone were kind of hilarious.
Left fork
Third left, left fork
Bird
Cross river, straight
^ :D
The church was beautiful. There was a statue of St. Anthony of Padua, and everyone had left intentions there. They'd also left them in the chapel up front. I'm not sure if I can describe why I like the church so much. It just felt like a good place to be, and I really like Trastevere.
This class really taught me a lot of stuff about the Bible that I didn't know. Granted, I don't really read the Bible, and I never really thought about it as literature before because the though never crossed my mind. But of course it is. The patron-client relationship and the slave-master relationships are really relevant. And the manager as the go-between. Relationships that seem cruel, like beating the slave and such--that was just business. And the patron trusted the manager to manage his affairs and with the slaves. There was a very rigid hierarchy of trust that you didn't mess with. I didn't realize how...rigid that was until now, I guess. And freed slaves immediately became their master's clients. It was cool.
Tomorrow--papal audience!
Left fork
Third left, left fork
Bird
Cross river, straight
^ :D
The church was beautiful. There was a statue of St. Anthony of Padua, and everyone had left intentions there. They'd also left them in the chapel up front. I'm not sure if I can describe why I like the church so much. It just felt like a good place to be, and I really like Trastevere.
This class really taught me a lot of stuff about the Bible that I didn't know. Granted, I don't really read the Bible, and I never really thought about it as literature before because the though never crossed my mind. But of course it is. The patron-client relationship and the slave-master relationships are really relevant. And the manager as the go-between. Relationships that seem cruel, like beating the slave and such--that was just business. And the patron trusted the manager to manage his affairs and with the slaves. There was a very rigid hierarchy of trust that you didn't mess with. I didn't realize how...rigid that was until now, I guess. And freed slaves immediately became their master's clients. It was cool.
Tomorrow--papal audience!
The June 20 Blog
This day was another adventure-filled day as I headed out again, ready to take on Rome for another day.
But first, pictures of trash in Napoli! Because I forgot to post those before.
I started walking and got a bit lost by the Colosseum, so I hung out on the street waiting for some touristy-looking people to come by with a map. I then got directions to Teatro di Marcello (also known as Tempio di Apollo). It has the remains of what used to be a temple for Apollo. And by remains, I mean REMAINS. There's like three columns left.
It was a theater, linked to an area that contained a lot of fish markets and was pretty cool. I then stumbled upon a church right next to it--St. Nichola in Carcere, or St. Nicholas in Prison. It was a nice church that had a back door going into a courtyard. They also had very modern Stations of the Cross hung in the church. I hopped the fence and found out that it led right to the entrance of the theater I couldn't get into--but it was locked. I rehopped the fence and continued walking. At one point, I accidentally walked into an office building.
I wandered around a little more before I ran into the Jewish Museum that I'd heard Ali and Katie had gone. I got in after having an interesting conversation with the guards:
First Guard: ItalianItalianItalian.
Me: Um...I'm trying to go to the museum? Um...museo?
First Guard: *points*
Me: Grazie.
I approached a second gate that looked very complicated.
Me: *pokes at gate*
Second Guard: Italian.
Me: Um...can I come in?
Second Guard: You want to come inside?
Me: Yes.
Second Guard: Okay. *presses button that open gate*
Me: *walks in*
Second Guard: Do you have a knife?
Me: No.
Second Guard: Okay. But I will check. *checks bag* Okay! You can go in. No photo. Grazie.
Me: Grazie.
The museum was amazing. They had all the fabrics that the Jews in Rome made in the ghetto when they were only allowed to work as textile workers. They took us into the Spanish Synagogue and the big synagogue, and security was tight, as someone had come in in the 80's and blown up the synagogue. A child had died and others were wounded. There was a lot of discrimination against the Jewish community. They showed a video of Pope John Paul II's acts of peace toward the Jewish community, and it was interesting. Because you hear about Catholic persecution and they persecuted Jews, and Jews were persecuted...
It was pretty cool, though, because last year, I went to a Jewish Friday service...I know what it's called but not how it's spelled. Anyway, so many of the Catholic mass parts come from that, and the two religions are really linked.
Here's my notes:
Quadriportivo is a four-sided porch. The Jews lived in the Ghetto of Rome. In the synagogue, the organ is only used for weddings. And there are a lot of symbols! The rooster represents the choice of good over evil. The palm represents a righteous person. The sun, waxing crescent, and stars represent divine law. Wheat symbolizes good and fruitful works. The tree of life represents life. The crown represents divine presence. The flowering branch represents the staff of Aaron, Moses's brother.
Rabbi David Prato contributed a lot to the Jewish community rerising in Rome. Also, there were ritual baths.
But first, pictures of trash in Napoli! Because I forgot to post those before.
I started walking and got a bit lost by the Colosseum, so I hung out on the street waiting for some touristy-looking people to come by with a map. I then got directions to Teatro di Marcello (also known as Tempio di Apollo). It has the remains of what used to be a temple for Apollo. And by remains, I mean REMAINS. There's like three columns left.
It was a theater, linked to an area that contained a lot of fish markets and was pretty cool. I then stumbled upon a church right next to it--St. Nichola in Carcere, or St. Nicholas in Prison. It was a nice church that had a back door going into a courtyard. They also had very modern Stations of the Cross hung in the church. I hopped the fence and found out that it led right to the entrance of the theater I couldn't get into--but it was locked. I rehopped the fence and continued walking. At one point, I accidentally walked into an office building.
I wandered around a little more before I ran into the Jewish Museum that I'd heard Ali and Katie had gone. I got in after having an interesting conversation with the guards:
First Guard: ItalianItalianItalian.
Me: Um...I'm trying to go to the museum? Um...museo?
First Guard: *points*
Me: Grazie.
I approached a second gate that looked very complicated.
Me: *pokes at gate*
Second Guard: Italian.
Me: Um...can I come in?
Second Guard: You want to come inside?
Me: Yes.
Second Guard: Okay. *presses button that open gate*
Me: *walks in*
Second Guard: Do you have a knife?
Me: No.
Second Guard: Okay. But I will check. *checks bag* Okay! You can go in. No photo. Grazie.
Me: Grazie.
The museum was amazing. They had all the fabrics that the Jews in Rome made in the ghetto when they were only allowed to work as textile workers. They took us into the Spanish Synagogue and the big synagogue, and security was tight, as someone had come in in the 80's and blown up the synagogue. A child had died and others were wounded. There was a lot of discrimination against the Jewish community. They showed a video of Pope John Paul II's acts of peace toward the Jewish community, and it was interesting. Because you hear about Catholic persecution and they persecuted Jews, and Jews were persecuted...
It was pretty cool, though, because last year, I went to a Jewish Friday service...I know what it's called but not how it's spelled. Anyway, so many of the Catholic mass parts come from that, and the two religions are really linked.
Here's my notes:
Quadriportivo is a four-sided porch. The Jews lived in the Ghetto of Rome. In the synagogue, the organ is only used for weddings. And there are a lot of symbols! The rooster represents the choice of good over evil. The palm represents a righteous person. The sun, waxing crescent, and stars represent divine law. Wheat symbolizes good and fruitful works. The tree of life represents life. The crown represents divine presence. The flowering branch represents the staff of Aaron, Moses's brother.
Rabbi David Prato contributed a lot to the Jewish community rerising in Rome. Also, there were ritual baths.
The June 19 Blog
Did I mention that when we came back to St. John's after our trip, we found that SERIOUS SHENANIGANS had gone on in our absence?
Today, I stayed in and worked on my Weebly. The night before, Antonia and I had stayed out in the courtyard for SIX HOURS after class. This may have been the day that Dr. Sebastian took us out for gelato. :)
GROUP PIC!!!
However, I do need to talk about something I learned, so I will talk about some things I've learned outside of class or things that have just come up without me going somewhere specific.
First, remember how I talked about how people wanted themselves portrayed as gods and goddesses in art? I found a movement like that while researching my Weebly. Jean-Marc Nattier (and we saw some of his paintings in the Uffizi, which happened after I was technically posting this but OKAY) painting a lot of pictures of royalty and nobility portrayed as Vestal Virgins. Now, as the clothing fit with the times, it's very interesting to see what his perception of "Vestal Virgin" was, but I think that it says a lot about how in his time, women were obviously supposed to strive for being virginal and loyal, all those things.
Second, I don't think I've posted on here about how it has really struck me that so many different people live on this world. As actress Gina Bellman says, "I have a bit of an anthropologist in me." And that's very true for me, though I'd never major in it (I appreciate the way it affects my life, but it's not what I'd want to do for the rest of my life). And yet, though people are so different, they're the same.
This involves a story.
I filled out my application to come to Italy in the free hour I had between my Chinese class in choir. It was cold that day, and I sat in the music building against a window that had some sun coming through it so I could keep warm. I knew I had wanted to go somewhere during the summer, that I wanted to be a writer and that I needed a second major to support my writing major, and that I would probably need to get a jump start on ACC courses to give myself some leeway to figure out what I wanted. In the end, I picked Italy for several reasons. I have a desire to not just visit places but to really get to know them, to understand a bit about how it works. I didn't get that the last time I was in Italy because I spent most of my time on a bus and really desired to know more.
Also, I'd been questioning my faith. Not really questioning whether or not I wanted to be Catholic but just wanting to know some more about it. So I signed up, hoping that I could go on this trip as a sort of pilgrimage and figure out some things that had been going on.
The moments stand out to me: having mass at St. Peter's and hearing the Our Father in four different languages; sitting in the Sistine Chapel and looking out over the crowd to find that nearly everyone at that moment had a hand extended toward the ceiling, pointing; the mountains of intentions I saw piling up in Maria Trastevere that people had left from all over the world, in every language imaginable.
The word "catholic" means "universal." But that statement is different when you look at things like that.
Pompeii Rant
I first read about Pompeii when I was (I believe?) in fifth grade. We had a short nonfiction story about it in one of our literature books. As a fifth grader, I couldn't comprehend the situation to the extent that I do now, but I do remember being quite chilled by the whole thing, as I imagined myself in those people's places. You always want to be the hero and the last person standing at the end of the movie. You want to be the person who gets out alive, hopefully with some friends so that you could keep on living.
What's not attractive to a ten year-old is the possibility of you suffocating to death by way of ash and debris as you cling to your family--or maybe you're alone--and wonder what is happening and why God did this to you.
At least, that's what I thought when I was in fifth grade. The word Pompeii became something of a nightmare for me after that. I would have dreams where I suffocated to death as gray fell like snow all around me, getting into my eyes and ears and mouth...
So I was a little nervous about going to Pompeii, just because that impression and those dreams (my own perception of what it would be like to suffocate) haunted part of my childhood. And it's a whole new level of being taken aback when those ashy bodies you've branded into your mind from the pages of your childhood textbook come back to you. The ancient world was scary, man.
But then again, so is ours.
I noticed the discomfort of some people around me. I think that one of the most important things this trip did, traveling to a world both foreign, modern, and ancient all at the same time, was make all of us question our humanity and our beliefs. People showed great respect for the dead on the trip in my opinion, but they did it in different ways. Getting used to those different ways was also part of the trip. A lot of us didn't know each other, and a lot of us came from different backgrounds. It's very, very easy to judge people when it comes to that. I noticed some people judging when deciding whether or not they wanted to take pictures of the bodies. Even Rosario brought up the issue when she was talking about the two different ways they made the body casts. One was made with plaster and one was made with gelatin. The gelatin bodies were too detailed, and people made those stop because it was too sad.
I mean, even these bodies are sad. They're crouching on the floor, holding each other for comfort. This is the kind of thing you see in modern art, when people try to make the faceless and expressionless people just convey an action. Because there's no face or name or anything, it's like they're one of everyone. It could be you.
We dealt with this same thing in the churches, seeing incorruptible bodies. It was hard for people--first, the notion that a person couldn't decompose after she died was kind of a hard idea in itself--truth or conspiracy? But then came the question of how you were supposed to respect something like that. Was it okay for someone to put a body like that on display for everyone to see?
It's a fair question. No one asked these people. When the people on Pompeii woke up, they didn't know that it was the morning so many of them would die. They didn't consider the prospect of themselves being buried under ash and lava. They didn't consider that their bodies would remain preserved in the position they died in for so many years, that they would remain preserved by the very thing that killed them, until people found them years later. They didn't know.
The word "consent" shows up a lot these days. These people didn't sign contracts, nothing.
Think about that for a second while I tell you another story.
When my father died, my mom took my sister and me to his grave on all the important dates: Christmas, Thanksgiving, St. Patrick's Day (we're Irish--what do you think we were going to do?). I hated going. Absolutely hated it. I would wait until the last second, until my mom was screaming at me to get into the car. We'd buy flowers at Wal-Mart, and I'd barely speak, barely offer an opinion on the flowers we were getting. When we got to the grave, I'd get out, put the flowers down and get away as fast as I could.
I don't get angry often. I get sad. I get happy. I get embarrassed. But I don't stay angry very long. Anger makes me exhausted. So do grudges. I don't know how people do them. I held one for the longest time, and it absolutely affected me all the time. Finally, I sat down and wondered why I felt that way every time I went to visit the grave. What I felt was anger, and I didn't understand.
There is no life inside a dead body.
I know that it's the most obvious statement in the world, but it means something totally different when you see it. What was buried in the grave forty-five minutes away from my house is not my father. It's a shell of him, and it's the shell full of life that I remember every time I think of him. As far as I was concerned, my father wasn't at his grave. It's a box and a concrete marker. And we put flowers in front of that. It was frustrating to me that an action so many people perform didn't mean that much, at least in my eyes. It was hard for me to think that we still needed to cling to something so material when my father was not material at all.
But it's a human thing to do, yes?
The incorruptible bodies and the casts in Pompeii are shells of people. The people aren't there anymore. And I don't know if they would have wanted their bodies on display. I ask myself if I would want my body on display, and I don't know. I feel self-conscious about my body. Would I be able to pick out what I wore? Or anything about my display? Probably not. You can't ask these people questions. We can't ever fully know them. They're not physically with us anymore.
But each one of those shells, each one was a person. Each one had a preference for whether or not he or she wanted his or her body on display. Each one had a favorite color and a favorite food and an opinion on who they were and what the world was. That is striking. And it's overwhelming. And it's unsettling.
But how you deal with that is going to be unique to you. I took pictures of the casts and not the incorruptibles. Maybe because I wanted to remember the feeling I had when I saw them. Maybe it's because I wanted the feeling but not the face that went with the feeling.
My mom took a picture of my grandfather's body inside his casket at the funeral. I asked her why she did that when no one else did, and she said that it was because it was still a memory, even though it wasn't a good one. Maybe that's the best explanation of what I'm trying to say here. I still think that the question is something you have to ask yourself. Death is still part of life, as much as we try to ignore it.
What's not attractive to a ten year-old is the possibility of you suffocating to death by way of ash and debris as you cling to your family--or maybe you're alone--and wonder what is happening and why God did this to you.
At least, that's what I thought when I was in fifth grade. The word Pompeii became something of a nightmare for me after that. I would have dreams where I suffocated to death as gray fell like snow all around me, getting into my eyes and ears and mouth...
So I was a little nervous about going to Pompeii, just because that impression and those dreams (my own perception of what it would be like to suffocate) haunted part of my childhood. And it's a whole new level of being taken aback when those ashy bodies you've branded into your mind from the pages of your childhood textbook come back to you. The ancient world was scary, man.
But then again, so is ours.
I noticed the discomfort of some people around me. I think that one of the most important things this trip did, traveling to a world both foreign, modern, and ancient all at the same time, was make all of us question our humanity and our beliefs. People showed great respect for the dead on the trip in my opinion, but they did it in different ways. Getting used to those different ways was also part of the trip. A lot of us didn't know each other, and a lot of us came from different backgrounds. It's very, very easy to judge people when it comes to that. I noticed some people judging when deciding whether or not they wanted to take pictures of the bodies. Even Rosario brought up the issue when she was talking about the two different ways they made the body casts. One was made with plaster and one was made with gelatin. The gelatin bodies were too detailed, and people made those stop because it was too sad.
I mean, even these bodies are sad. They're crouching on the floor, holding each other for comfort. This is the kind of thing you see in modern art, when people try to make the faceless and expressionless people just convey an action. Because there's no face or name or anything, it's like they're one of everyone. It could be you.
We dealt with this same thing in the churches, seeing incorruptible bodies. It was hard for people--first, the notion that a person couldn't decompose after she died was kind of a hard idea in itself--truth or conspiracy? But then came the question of how you were supposed to respect something like that. Was it okay for someone to put a body like that on display for everyone to see?
It's a fair question. No one asked these people. When the people on Pompeii woke up, they didn't know that it was the morning so many of them would die. They didn't consider the prospect of themselves being buried under ash and lava. They didn't consider that their bodies would remain preserved in the position they died in for so many years, that they would remain preserved by the very thing that killed them, until people found them years later. They didn't know.
The word "consent" shows up a lot these days. These people didn't sign contracts, nothing.
Think about that for a second while I tell you another story.
When my father died, my mom took my sister and me to his grave on all the important dates: Christmas, Thanksgiving, St. Patrick's Day (we're Irish--what do you think we were going to do?). I hated going. Absolutely hated it. I would wait until the last second, until my mom was screaming at me to get into the car. We'd buy flowers at Wal-Mart, and I'd barely speak, barely offer an opinion on the flowers we were getting. When we got to the grave, I'd get out, put the flowers down and get away as fast as I could.
I don't get angry often. I get sad. I get happy. I get embarrassed. But I don't stay angry very long. Anger makes me exhausted. So do grudges. I don't know how people do them. I held one for the longest time, and it absolutely affected me all the time. Finally, I sat down and wondered why I felt that way every time I went to visit the grave. What I felt was anger, and I didn't understand.
There is no life inside a dead body.
I know that it's the most obvious statement in the world, but it means something totally different when you see it. What was buried in the grave forty-five minutes away from my house is not my father. It's a shell of him, and it's the shell full of life that I remember every time I think of him. As far as I was concerned, my father wasn't at his grave. It's a box and a concrete marker. And we put flowers in front of that. It was frustrating to me that an action so many people perform didn't mean that much, at least in my eyes. It was hard for me to think that we still needed to cling to something so material when my father was not material at all.
But it's a human thing to do, yes?
The incorruptible bodies and the casts in Pompeii are shells of people. The people aren't there anymore. And I don't know if they would have wanted their bodies on display. I ask myself if I would want my body on display, and I don't know. I feel self-conscious about my body. Would I be able to pick out what I wore? Or anything about my display? Probably not. You can't ask these people questions. We can't ever fully know them. They're not physically with us anymore.
But each one of those shells, each one was a person. Each one had a preference for whether or not he or she wanted his or her body on display. Each one had a favorite color and a favorite food and an opinion on who they were and what the world was. That is striking. And it's overwhelming. And it's unsettling.
But how you deal with that is going to be unique to you. I took pictures of the casts and not the incorruptibles. Maybe because I wanted to remember the feeling I had when I saw them. Maybe it's because I wanted the feeling but not the face that went with the feeling.
My mom took a picture of my grandfather's body inside his casket at the funeral. I asked her why she did that when no one else did, and she said that it was because it was still a memory, even though it wasn't a good one. Maybe that's the best explanation of what I'm trying to say here. I still think that the question is something you have to ask yourself. Death is still part of life, as much as we try to ignore it.
Pompeii and Naples
After an emotional post like that, I just needed to recharge my emotions a little. I'm back in the States now, but I will blog until the end of this trip.
Also, I lost twenty-five pounds in Italy. Can we talk about that? EPIC.
So here's some pictures from Napoli and Pompeii. We took a train over, which was nice. It was an hour and a half and was originally supposed to be three hours, which made some people angry because I think they were planning on sleeping (and a lot of us were up late packing and doing work), but it turned out okay. We kept on keeping on, because that's what you do when you're a college student. :)
And I got some nice views of Naples.
We got lost.
But we eventually ended up on another train and in Pompeii with our guide, Rosario. She's awesome. And she loves to tell us cool things!
Basically, she and her architecture students had been uncovering an old house they found near Pompeii. She said that the house had collapsed in 62 CE then was rebuilt. It had a room like a hallway as well as a thermal bath. There was an earthquake in 62 CE--the reason for the house's collapse. Building on it continued after the earthquake.
There were frescoes in the house that looked like Venus and Eros, which bear a remarkable resemblance to the Madonna and Child. Dare I sense a connection? :) Pompeii as a city was surrounded by walls, and the fresoes were made using the city walls. The house was also made out of the old city wall, and we could see a bit of that as we walked around. The walls were made into a house because they weren't necessary anymore. The walls were built for wars, and when there were no more wars, they took down the wall. Pompeii became a Roman colony in 89 BC, and people who won the war got the property. After 89 CE, people began to rebuild, and the house that they had recovered was one of the best examples of a beautiful villa rebuilt (according to Dr. Rosario).
The bedrooms were dark for temperature control (since there was no air-conditioning or heating back then :P).
Pompeii features four different painting styles. In 1889, an archaeologist looked at some frescos (frescoes? I apologize in advance because I'm getting it wrong somewhere) and figured out the styles. They go in a chronological order.
First: 200-80 BCE (native Pompeii?)
Second: 80-20 BCE
Third: 20 BCE-30 CE
Fourth: 30-79 CE
The eruption happened around 79-80 CE. The Fourth style is often split into two styles because of the earthquake that happened in 62 CE.
We learned the difference between Herculaneum and Pompeii. Herculaneum is another small ancient city very close to Herculaneum that was destroyed by a volcano. However, while Herculaneum was immediately destroyed by hot toxic gases. Lava covered the city later. Pompeii got the ash and debris first. They had time to escape, but most people didn't realize Vesuvius's warning.
[Long rant I will make a separate post because it's taking up a lot of space here.]
We had an excellent champagne metaphor to explain all of this. If you weren't there...well, you should have been there.
Pompeii was officially discovered in 1990, but people had known about it beforehand. They saw a bit of the ruins sticking out from under the earth. And so they began to dig.
A funny situation happened when we found a public bath (equivalent to a locker room) that had pictures of sex positions on the walls. A first century aqueduct provided water. The water that needed to be heated was heated by a grate. Pompeii had its own Forum for the market and politics. We also found two theaters. One sat 20,000 people! Theater productions could last two or three days. I honestly have no idea how they did that. Sometimes, I feel like ancient people were more practical but could party harder than we did. It's that whole work hard, play hard thing. But I guess you'd need money to play.
We were told that the eruption of Mount Vesuvius was thought to have happened around August 24. In October and November, people wear heavier clothes. They still put it around that area though, the eruption.
Venus was a big protector for Pompeii.
We walked into the Villa of Mysteries, a very cool title. The villa was actually discovered right next to a previously existing house. Imagine not knowing that was there the entire time you were living there. The house was built before the villa was discovered; we walked though both. The villa was used for the production of wine and had frescos that were definitely up for interpretation, even by experts. We took a crack at it and were very tired, which caused some really hilarious suggestions.
Also, I lost twenty-five pounds in Italy. Can we talk about that? EPIC.
So here's some pictures from Napoli and Pompeii. We took a train over, which was nice. It was an hour and a half and was originally supposed to be three hours, which made some people angry because I think they were planning on sleeping (and a lot of us were up late packing and doing work), but it turned out okay. We kept on keeping on, because that's what you do when you're a college student. :)
And I got some nice views of Naples.
We got lost.
But we eventually ended up on another train and in Pompeii with our guide, Rosario. She's awesome. And she loves to tell us cool things!
Basically, she and her architecture students had been uncovering an old house they found near Pompeii. She said that the house had collapsed in 62 CE then was rebuilt. It had a room like a hallway as well as a thermal bath. There was an earthquake in 62 CE--the reason for the house's collapse. Building on it continued after the earthquake.
There were frescoes in the house that looked like Venus and Eros, which bear a remarkable resemblance to the Madonna and Child. Dare I sense a connection? :) Pompeii as a city was surrounded by walls, and the fresoes were made using the city walls. The house was also made out of the old city wall, and we could see a bit of that as we walked around. The walls were made into a house because they weren't necessary anymore. The walls were built for wars, and when there were no more wars, they took down the wall. Pompeii became a Roman colony in 89 BC, and people who won the war got the property. After 89 CE, people began to rebuild, and the house that they had recovered was one of the best examples of a beautiful villa rebuilt (according to Dr. Rosario).
The bedrooms were dark for temperature control (since there was no air-conditioning or heating back then :P).
Pompeii features four different painting styles. In 1889, an archaeologist looked at some frescos (frescoes? I apologize in advance because I'm getting it wrong somewhere) and figured out the styles. They go in a chronological order.
First: 200-80 BCE (native Pompeii?)
Second: 80-20 BCE
Third: 20 BCE-30 CE
Fourth: 30-79 CE
The eruption happened around 79-80 CE. The Fourth style is often split into two styles because of the earthquake that happened in 62 CE.
We learned the difference between Herculaneum and Pompeii. Herculaneum is another small ancient city very close to Herculaneum that was destroyed by a volcano. However, while Herculaneum was immediately destroyed by hot toxic gases. Lava covered the city later. Pompeii got the ash and debris first. They had time to escape, but most people didn't realize Vesuvius's warning.
[Long rant I will make a separate post because it's taking up a lot of space here.]
We had an excellent champagne metaphor to explain all of this. If you weren't there...well, you should have been there.
Pompeii was officially discovered in 1990, but people had known about it beforehand. They saw a bit of the ruins sticking out from under the earth. And so they began to dig.
A funny situation happened when we found a public bath (equivalent to a locker room) that had pictures of sex positions on the walls. A first century aqueduct provided water. The water that needed to be heated was heated by a grate. Pompeii had its own Forum for the market and politics. We also found two theaters. One sat 20,000 people! Theater productions could last two or three days. I honestly have no idea how they did that. Sometimes, I feel like ancient people were more practical but could party harder than we did. It's that whole work hard, play hard thing. But I guess you'd need money to play.
We were told that the eruption of Mount Vesuvius was thought to have happened around August 24. In October and November, people wear heavier clothes. They still put it around that area though, the eruption.
Venus was a big protector for Pompeii.
We walked into the Villa of Mysteries, a very cool title. The villa was actually discovered right next to a previously existing house. Imagine not knowing that was there the entire time you were living there. The house was built before the villa was discovered; we walked though both. The villa was used for the production of wine and had frescos that were definitely up for interpretation, even by experts. We took a crack at it and were very tired, which caused some really hilarious suggestions.
That's it for now! I'm sorry that the pictures are all jumbled together this time, but I'm trying to change up the visual aspects of my blog for some variance...and to see what works the best. :)
The June 18 Post
Here's some pictures from the Villa of Mysteries!
Also, here's some other things that I learned in Pompeii that I forgot to put in here.
So for each family's house, there was a lararium, right? That's where all the household gods were kept. Well, there were also paintings of the household deities, or their ancestors. There were frescos on the house walls showing the big main ancestor of the family surrounded by other important ancestors or household gods. Often, this featured a snake to protect the house and ward off the evil eye.
I'm posting later than usual because after everything that happened (and a bunch of syllabus changes), my teachers decided that it would be good to make work due after the bulk of the trip. I loved that idea, because work had been on my mind along with the stress of just...trying not to be noticed.
That sounds kind of weird. Most people know me as one of those bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, sparkly/bubbly people, and I like that when I'm around people I know. And I like to know most people. But in a situation like today, when I was going to be out in Italy by myself (because I hadn't done that yet), I like to see how invisible I can make myself. It makes me feel safe. Also, it makes it easier to pretend you're a secret agent.
I'm getting off-track, though.
I listed a bunch of sites in my phone (under my notes) and typed in directions I got from my room. I began at the Capitoline Museum and actually went there with Carlyn and Kathryn (among others) and got lost taking pictures. :P
So what did I see in the Capitoline Museum? I think the correct question is WHAT DIDN'T I SEE?
I saw so many things. I'll try to limit to the big ones. I was getting kind of loopy at this point, so I took a lot of statue pictures.
I learn a lot at these sites--not only from the site itself but also from the people around me. SO MANY EDUCATED PEOPLE IN THE WORLD! And they all know the most random things. And I only heard and understood the people in English. Imagine if I understood all the other ones too.
There's a movement (that I guess isn't too surprising) I saw among the ancient sculptures and paintings to portray people as gods and goddesses. Lots of the titles were like "Queen Suchandsuch as Juno" or other titles. The Greeks often had themselves portrayed as intellectuals like the philosophers. The Romans often had themselves portrayed as emperors or the families of emperors (this I learned courtesy of Guy Who Spoke English next to me who was explaining the room to his wife). I saw other imageo and read about how that translated into portraits.
And, this is a weird connection, but I was reading the books for class and there's this whole thing in there about portraits and how they (like imageo) were a really big deal because of their relation to what they represented or portrayed. That whole thing about Christians and idols was true. They did come from a pagan culture where idols were very common, so some of them went to extreme means to reject idols of all kinds. Art had a very, very close relationship to what it portrayed, and I think the strength of that was frightening to people. They had to figure that whole thing out.
There's an old gag that I pulled when I used to work at the Renaissance festival. I wore a very nice dress, and a lot of people wanted pictures with me. However, one of the ways I screened the crowd from the cute kids who wanted pictures with the princess and the creepy guys who just wanted to cop a feel (though, to be fair, that was hard because I wore a lot of petticoats) was that if I was uncomfortable, I would simply flee and yell (in character, of course) about how the camera was a soul-stealer and the work of demons. Because that would have been a common belief back then.
And it is a common belief! And it still holds true in parts of the Mediterranean area and other parts of the world. Which is why we needed to be careful if we took pictures of people and ask first. So that relationship is still there, between the art (the portrayal) and the subject.
After that, I had lost the rest of my group, so I just started walking. I ended up at the Spanish Steps and was very excited, because that was one of the few stops that I saw in Rome the last time I was there and didn't actually get to experience. I climbed, and at the topI found Chiesa de la Trinita die Monti, or Trinity of Mounts. It was a lovely church, and I got in courtesy of the shawl I always kept in my purse. :) It featured the Borghese Chapel.
I also found another street monument, an insula just out there on the street. I couldn't get inside but it had a nice freso of Mary on it (I can't find the picture for the life of me, though, so please forgive).
After that, I walked to the Etruskan Museum, which was north of the Flaminio stop on the underground. That was kind of scary because walking there took me on some streets that were (a) off the map that I'd created of Rome inside my head and (2) deserted. I almost turned around and went back, but I was determined to have my day of adventure.
Honestly, I was also trying to prove to myself that I wasn't afraid and that I could totally walk around Rome by myself and be fine. I needed to get back on the horse, so to speak, after Napoli.
I took a bunch of notes at the museum and even saw a terra cotta sarcophagus! (Said sarcophagus had a blurb about it that contained the phrase "large sarcophagus which housed a diceased," causing the lady next to me to snicker and say well, wasn't that obvious?) Sadly, the museum wouldn't let me take too many pictures, but I had some fun in the garden outside and saw lots of things before I went inside. It was hard for me to find the entrance, and I think everyone who worked there thought I was stupid. But really, it was a big white building with a lot of doors. I kept wandering into maintenance hallways.
According to the museum, the genre of the deceased could be detected by grade goods. The period from 630-580 BCE was known as the Orientalizing Period and featured the black figure technique (kind of those black figures and symbols and decorations you find on those orange terra-cotta jars?)
Ariadne, like the Endymion/Jonah, can be detected in the telltale sleeping position. According to this museum, so could Dionysus. Which makes sense because he liked to lounge and party. :P
I saw pieces found in a Villanovan cemetery. Hercules was one of the most popular figures for art. Hermes, the messenger god, was linked to Iris, a female messenger god. That was a connection I hadn't thought of before, even though I knew they were both messenger gods.
Towards the end of the first hall exhibit was a special sarcophagi with two people on top of it--a man and a woman. This was Sarcophago degli Sposi, ionic. The ends included men and women. I suppose that the spouses wanted to be together, even in death.
Learning about Etruskan gods was interesting. Their underworld gods were Apollo and Suri, Cavatha and Persephone. I don't know how Apollo ended up being the Greek god of light. They also had a nice blurb on the Etruscan alphabet, which was determined to be pre/proto-Indo-European (though Indo-European, as I learned in my Latin class in high school, is kind of considered one of those huge and encompassing Mother of All Languages). They made an important distinction--it was not ike the Greek alphabet.
The Etruskans were a war-loving people, and many of the main gods for the Romans were gods that had a connection to war, such as Jupiter, Mars, and Minerva. Cel was their mother goddess and goddess of fertility and the Underworld.
Further in, they LITERALLY had an exhibit on the history of vases, which I thought was pretty awesome. They carried water and practical things way before they were simple decorations or flower-holders in modern homes. They also had a hall of great jewelry. And down in the crypt of the museum (of course :P) there was a grave--rather spooky because no one else was there. Also, I found out more about the tufo and nenfro dirt--easy to dig through until it hits the air and hardens. They used this for the catacombs and other things.
Also (this is kind of funny), while I was in there, kind of spooked by all the silence, someone's cell phone went off and it was that I'M NEVER GONNA DANCE AGAIN song. It made me giggle.
Coming back for class was a lot easier than going out. I was walking toward a lot of people this time, and I felt so much safer. It's ridiculous, the kinds of personal security cues you pick up along the way. I decided not to take the underground and to just walk from Piazza del Populo back to campus. I'm so glad I did. Because this happened:
So you know that this had to happen.
I got back to campus and stopped to soak my feet in the campus fountain (shh) because I'd been walking around in stylish flats all day, trying to blend in. I had time to snap a few pictures because I saw...well...here's the pictures.
I hung my clothes out my window in the morning, hoping they'd dry from their handwash the night before. Looking around the courtyard, I noticed that someone's clothes were strewn all over the place. Suddenly, I realized they were mine. First, I felt panic. Then, I felt relieved. I had realized this before anyone could take them! Then I realized that they were on the sides of the building and basically in places that I'd have to risk my neck to climb to get them. So I felt panic. And then, I felt an adrenaline rush. After all, I had just taken on ROME. BY MYSELF. Of course I could be adventurous one more time to get my clothes!
I put my shoes back on and began to climb, for one minute, balancing myself on a thin rain about two inches wide. I retrieved all the items, ran back upstairs, and ran back downstairs for class.
That was my adventurous day. And it was awesome.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Three Questions
I'm going to use some strong language in this post. If that's not okay with you, you should probably refrain from reading this one. I believe that strong language should be saved (notice I said "should," which does not mean that I necessarily adhere to this belief all the time) for strong situations, and I can at least assure you that this is one of those.
I don't have much to show you about our trip to Napoli (or Naples), Blue Capri, and Pompeii because we didn't stay there the whole time. We left early because we didn't feel safe. We were told that Napoli was an unsafe city. We were told that pickpockets and perverts ran rampant and wild. Usually this translates into "stay in the good part of town and no one gets hurt," but that wasn't the case.
On the bus getting from the train station to the airport, my professor had her camera stolen out of her bag. She looked down, saw the guy's hand in her bag, and started hitting his hand to try and get him away. He still got the camera. I got felt up on the bus, and I was lucky because someone else felt up my friend with the intention of getting under her skirt. Right after we got off the bus, our group (mostly female) got called cunts by the locals. Later that night, my friend almost got pickpocketed by a kid.
I'm young, but I'm not naive. Those are all things that can happen when you're out somewhere. They happen all the time, and this time, they happened to us. I'd already carried out the precautions: stuck my money on my body, carried a pickpocket-resistant purse (I just made up that term), didn't make too much eye contact with people.
And then the next day, while my friends are walking back from a day at the beach, a guy drives up on a motorcycle and tries to take her bag. He knocks her over and she gets dragged down the street until her purse breaks and he drives off.
I wasn't going to put that part in here. I was going to go through my pictures from Pompeii and mention that we left early but not provide any reason about it. Because why should I? Blogger tells me that the majority of my readers are in the US, across the ocean. I wasn't even there. Antonia and I had walked back a couple hours before from the island. And the reason I haven't been on here was because I was trying to figure out a way I could just move on, even in writing, and not pretend everything happened. It was hard, and that's when I realized that it wasn't the right thing for me to do. Suppressing the truth has gotten so many people in trouble in the past. But even worse, I considered staying silent. But if I'm silent, that guy wins. And so does everyone else who takes advantage of tourists or women or teenagers or people who look a certain way or talk a certain way.
I live my life convincing myself that the world is the most horrible place imaginable. Every stranger is a potential threat. Every situation is a worst-case scenario. Does that mean I live my life in constant fear? No. Because I'm here to live, and you can't do that if you're always looking over your shoulder. I've learned that. But if I can acknowledge the truth, if I can make peace with the fact that the majority of the world and my life is out of my control, if I can live aware knowing that my gender and my color and my culture and my language will always to a certain extent condemn me in the eyes of people I have never met...then I can live without unnecessary anger at God and the world and "those other people." Because all of the danger is danger we as a species created. We were in Napoli for less than seventy-two hours. Other people go through what we did for their whole lives, and it's much worse. Someone tried to take my friend's possessions, but she's still alive and healthy. Someone touched me without my permission, but he didn't break me. I keep telling myself that we were lucky it wasn't worse.
But there's a second question here, and if you're reading this, you've already asked it. Because after you ask yourself Why and you answer it with That's just the way it is, there's a second question. I've been ignoring it, because I've rationalized the first question by essentially saying that there is no answer, but then that throws you in the dangerous realm of I Let Everyone and Everything Walk Over Me Land, and I don't want to go there.
Should things be this way?
See, that's an easy one. No one has to rationalize their way through that one or lose sleep or cry or break things over that one. The answer is no. That's just the way it is was the crappy half-ass answer you got from your parents when you were a kid, and I think you'll all agree that it hasn't gained any strength over time.
That was easy. Let's move on to the third question: what do we do about it?
That's only half-rhetorical, because I'm not entirely sure myself. You individually will make almost no impact. And that's usually where we call it quits. Do we blame the other people? Do we play that awesome game called If Only? That game got played after everything happened in Napoli. If our teachers had been there...if we'd been walking in a group...if we hadn't walked so close to the street...if more boys had been there...if we had been watching more closely...
Blame's what started the mess in the first place. I don't have to tell you that.
Maybe that's where we go from here. Some of you reading this have made stopping discrimination and violence the focus of your lives. Maybe that's where you're needed. Others of us are needed somewhere else. But can we stop the blame? Can we think a little more about things that come out of our mouths? Can we remember that people are never, never, ever to be looked at as objects?
I've been constantly running this whole trip. I've constantly felt like I was in competition or like I wasn't doing enough or I wasn't seeing enough. I focus less and less on the human aspects of our trip with every blog post I make. I know this. But I know that this, the experience I had in Napoli, will be the most important lesson I carry away from here. And what do you know? It's one I've learned before, again and again, a thousand times.
On our first day here, TerTer said that repetition was the mother of learning.
Last week, Hutch and Sebass were talking, and she asked him who they were kidding, we weren't adults, we were still kids. And he looked at her and said, "But you are adults. Of course you are."
That has never been so painfully realistic.
I don't have much to show you about our trip to Napoli (or Naples), Blue Capri, and Pompeii because we didn't stay there the whole time. We left early because we didn't feel safe. We were told that Napoli was an unsafe city. We were told that pickpockets and perverts ran rampant and wild. Usually this translates into "stay in the good part of town and no one gets hurt," but that wasn't the case.
On the bus getting from the train station to the airport, my professor had her camera stolen out of her bag. She looked down, saw the guy's hand in her bag, and started hitting his hand to try and get him away. He still got the camera. I got felt up on the bus, and I was lucky because someone else felt up my friend with the intention of getting under her skirt. Right after we got off the bus, our group (mostly female) got called cunts by the locals. Later that night, my friend almost got pickpocketed by a kid.
I'm young, but I'm not naive. Those are all things that can happen when you're out somewhere. They happen all the time, and this time, they happened to us. I'd already carried out the precautions: stuck my money on my body, carried a pickpocket-resistant purse (I just made up that term), didn't make too much eye contact with people.
And then the next day, while my friends are walking back from a day at the beach, a guy drives up on a motorcycle and tries to take her bag. He knocks her over and she gets dragged down the street until her purse breaks and he drives off.
I wasn't going to put that part in here. I was going to go through my pictures from Pompeii and mention that we left early but not provide any reason about it. Because why should I? Blogger tells me that the majority of my readers are in the US, across the ocean. I wasn't even there. Antonia and I had walked back a couple hours before from the island. And the reason I haven't been on here was because I was trying to figure out a way I could just move on, even in writing, and not pretend everything happened. It was hard, and that's when I realized that it wasn't the right thing for me to do. Suppressing the truth has gotten so many people in trouble in the past. But even worse, I considered staying silent. But if I'm silent, that guy wins. And so does everyone else who takes advantage of tourists or women or teenagers or people who look a certain way or talk a certain way.
I live my life convincing myself that the world is the most horrible place imaginable. Every stranger is a potential threat. Every situation is a worst-case scenario. Does that mean I live my life in constant fear? No. Because I'm here to live, and you can't do that if you're always looking over your shoulder. I've learned that. But if I can acknowledge the truth, if I can make peace with the fact that the majority of the world and my life is out of my control, if I can live aware knowing that my gender and my color and my culture and my language will always to a certain extent condemn me in the eyes of people I have never met...then I can live without unnecessary anger at God and the world and "those other people." Because all of the danger is danger we as a species created. We were in Napoli for less than seventy-two hours. Other people go through what we did for their whole lives, and it's much worse. Someone tried to take my friend's possessions, but she's still alive and healthy. Someone touched me without my permission, but he didn't break me. I keep telling myself that we were lucky it wasn't worse.
But there's a second question here, and if you're reading this, you've already asked it. Because after you ask yourself Why and you answer it with That's just the way it is, there's a second question. I've been ignoring it, because I've rationalized the first question by essentially saying that there is no answer, but then that throws you in the dangerous realm of I Let Everyone and Everything Walk Over Me Land, and I don't want to go there.
Should things be this way?
See, that's an easy one. No one has to rationalize their way through that one or lose sleep or cry or break things over that one. The answer is no. That's just the way it is was the crappy half-ass answer you got from your parents when you were a kid, and I think you'll all agree that it hasn't gained any strength over time.
That was easy. Let's move on to the third question: what do we do about it?
That's only half-rhetorical, because I'm not entirely sure myself. You individually will make almost no impact. And that's usually where we call it quits. Do we blame the other people? Do we play that awesome game called If Only? That game got played after everything happened in Napoli. If our teachers had been there...if we'd been walking in a group...if we hadn't walked so close to the street...if more boys had been there...if we had been watching more closely...
Blame's what started the mess in the first place. I don't have to tell you that.
Maybe that's where we go from here. Some of you reading this have made stopping discrimination and violence the focus of your lives. Maybe that's where you're needed. Others of us are needed somewhere else. But can we stop the blame? Can we think a little more about things that come out of our mouths? Can we remember that people are never, never, ever to be looked at as objects?
I've been constantly running this whole trip. I've constantly felt like I was in competition or like I wasn't doing enough or I wasn't seeing enough. I focus less and less on the human aspects of our trip with every blog post I make. I know this. But I know that this, the experience I had in Napoli, will be the most important lesson I carry away from here. And what do you know? It's one I've learned before, again and again, a thousand times.
On our first day here, TerTer said that repetition was the mother of learning.
Last week, Hutch and Sebass were talking, and she asked him who they were kidding, we weren't adults, we were still kids. And he looked at her and said, "But you are adults. Of course you are."
That has never been so painfully realistic.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Ostia Antica
We leave for Naples (Napoli) tomorrow, and I'm so excited but also a little sad because I won't have my computer and won't be able to talk to you guys for three days! :(
Today we went to Ostia Antica, which is 30 km to the west of Rome. We took three different trains to get there and didn't have to walk (thank goodness!). Ostia Antica was a Roman city abandoned over time. I've noticed that everyone is getting very well-versed in what we're looking for, so it almost seemed easier, though I was extremely tired from staying up all night then night before.
The first thing we saw was a sarcophagus what looked like a female Endymion on it. AND I IDENTIFIED IT AS ARIADNE. :D (Btw, the general theme of today was EVERYONE GOES CRAZY because we were all so tired and yeah. I also saw the wheel on it, and Dr. TerTer pointed out the moon goddess.
Quote from the Train Ride Over:
Kathryn: What just happened?
Hutch: We're in the middle of the forest.
Kathryn: Back to sleep.
Other Things Kylee Learned Today
I learned that they tried to build an airport at the edge of Ostia Antica and then ended up finding ships in the riverbed. The ships are now in museums. I learned that a columbarium is a name for a niche that can hold an urn...or a pigeon. The word translates directly into "pigeon house." :P A necropolis had many rooms, and the Christian idea (or at least the part in the Bible) about heaven being a place with many rooms comes from the idea of a necropolis. Probably. Also, every Roman city had at least two roads: one running from north to south and one running from east to west. A stoa was a covered porchway.
I'm sorry that I'm not elaborating or ornamenting today. I'm just so tired.
Roman insulae built up from the ground up. Most had three or four floors. They kept their food off the floor so that animals wouldn't eat it and some had charcoal stoves. Said charcoal stoves were outlawed after the fire that happened.
AND THEN WE SAW A THEATER. Katie gave us a presentation on that. There was the house and the orchestra there. The temple to a god was kept in the middle, so that people had a reason to upkeep the temple and use it for things other than shows. The particular one we were in held 3000 people but it was expanded to 4000. It held very lewd performances. If actors (which were all men) were playing men, they wore brown masks, and if they were women, they wore white ones. First, people stood to watch shows. They eventually moved to sitting. The first two rows had comfortable stone chairs for the wealthy. Ancient Greek temples had spots for the gods and muses, and performances were meant to please and appease the gods, but the Roman theater business was...exactly that, a business.
They originally thought that Christians and Jews didn't go to theater performances, but they changed their minds when in Turkey, they found seats inscribed with Hebrew. TerTer made a connection to the bible (Bible? I never know if or when you're supposed to capitalize it) when she said that the gospel writer Luke (who was Greek and a Gentile) used comic roles in his gospel and was therefore probably acquainted with theater. Romans considered comedy better than tragedy.
We also saw mithraeum there, and I need to take more time later to talk more about this, because I didn't know anything about it before this trip, and it's really quite interesting. NOTE TO SELF. Y'all remind me, okay? :)
Dr. Sebastian went a little batty today. :P
You have to love that man.
We went to a museum right after that--it was on-site, and while the rest of the group went to a synagogue, Antonia and I had lunch with Elizabeth, who shared her three-course meal with us (I LOVE HER). Antonia and I were both running on extremely small amounts of sleep, and our iron levels (we're both anemic) were running low. Especially hers. So we had lunch (PORK SANDWICH FTW) and headed back to St. John's for a nap and for packing for Naples and everything.
Gosh, this is such a dry post, and it wasn't even a dry day. When I get back (three days...or four, I suppose), I'll post about Pompeii and about the ridiculous day that was today and Michelle's birthday party, which was tonight.
MICHELLE'S 21ST BIRTHDAY IS TODAY...OR TOMORROW...OR SOMETHING BUT THAT DOESN'T MATTER BECAUSE IT'S HER BIRTHDAY AND SHE'S 21!!!
^ YAY FOR SPARKLETEXT!!! See y'all in four days!
Today we went to Ostia Antica, which is 30 km to the west of Rome. We took three different trains to get there and didn't have to walk (thank goodness!). Ostia Antica was a Roman city abandoned over time. I've noticed that everyone is getting very well-versed in what we're looking for, so it almost seemed easier, though I was extremely tired from staying up all night then night before.
The first thing we saw was a sarcophagus what looked like a female Endymion on it. AND I IDENTIFIED IT AS ARIADNE. :D (Btw, the general theme of today was EVERYONE GOES CRAZY because we were all so tired and yeah. I also saw the wheel on it, and Dr. TerTer pointed out the moon goddess.
Quote from the Train Ride Over:
Kathryn: What just happened?
Hutch: We're in the middle of the forest.
Kathryn: Back to sleep.
Other Things Kylee Learned Today
I learned that they tried to build an airport at the edge of Ostia Antica and then ended up finding ships in the riverbed. The ships are now in museums. I learned that a columbarium is a name for a niche that can hold an urn...or a pigeon. The word translates directly into "pigeon house." :P A necropolis had many rooms, and the Christian idea (or at least the part in the Bible) about heaven being a place with many rooms comes from the idea of a necropolis. Probably. Also, every Roman city had at least two roads: one running from north to south and one running from east to west. A stoa was a covered porchway.
I'm sorry that I'm not elaborating or ornamenting today. I'm just so tired.
Roman insulae built up from the ground up. Most had three or four floors. They kept their food off the floor so that animals wouldn't eat it and some had charcoal stoves. Said charcoal stoves were outlawed after the fire that happened.
AND THEN WE SAW A THEATER. Katie gave us a presentation on that. There was the house and the orchestra there. The temple to a god was kept in the middle, so that people had a reason to upkeep the temple and use it for things other than shows. The particular one we were in held 3000 people but it was expanded to 4000. It held very lewd performances. If actors (which were all men) were playing men, they wore brown masks, and if they were women, they wore white ones. First, people stood to watch shows. They eventually moved to sitting. The first two rows had comfortable stone chairs for the wealthy. Ancient Greek temples had spots for the gods and muses, and performances were meant to please and appease the gods, but the Roman theater business was...exactly that, a business.
They originally thought that Christians and Jews didn't go to theater performances, but they changed their minds when in Turkey, they found seats inscribed with Hebrew. TerTer made a connection to the bible (Bible? I never know if or when you're supposed to capitalize it) when she said that the gospel writer Luke (who was Greek and a Gentile) used comic roles in his gospel and was therefore probably acquainted with theater. Romans considered comedy better than tragedy.
We also saw mithraeum there, and I need to take more time later to talk more about this, because I didn't know anything about it before this trip, and it's really quite interesting. NOTE TO SELF. Y'all remind me, okay? :)
Dr. Sebastian went a little batty today. :P
You have to love that man.
We went to a museum right after that--it was on-site, and while the rest of the group went to a synagogue, Antonia and I had lunch with Elizabeth, who shared her three-course meal with us (I LOVE HER). Antonia and I were both running on extremely small amounts of sleep, and our iron levels (we're both anemic) were running low. Especially hers. So we had lunch (PORK SANDWICH FTW) and headed back to St. John's for a nap and for packing for Naples and everything.
Gosh, this is such a dry post, and it wasn't even a dry day. When I get back (three days...or four, I suppose), I'll post about Pompeii and about the ridiculous day that was today and Michelle's birthday party, which was tonight.
MICHELLE'S 21ST BIRTHDAY IS TODAY...OR TOMORROW...OR SOMETHING BUT THAT DOESN'T MATTER BECAUSE IT'S HER BIRTHDAY AND SHE'S 21!!!
^ YAY FOR SPARKLETEXT!!! See y'all in four days!
Monday, June 13, 2011
YET ANOTHER QUOTES POST!
Michelle Rau: Guy asked me if I spoke Italian, and I was like, "Nope, sorry dude. I can't flirt with you."
Me: Hi Chris! Hi Jeff!
Jeff: A BIRD SHIT ON MY HEAD.
"Even though they have these traits that make them kind of...stupid." - Carlyn, on men
SPECIAL EDITION: QUOTES FROM THE SHORT BUS
"We forced every Italian off the bus!" *next stop: Italian lady gets off* "NOW WE FORCED EVERY ITALIAN OFF THE BUS!"
"I'M A BEAST!" - Mirau
"The door ate me!" - Sebass
"Our group would be on the short bus." - Hutch
"There are no short buses, only short people." - Me
"I almost fell in an old man's lap!" - Kathryn
"I no speak English." - lady who took one look at us and decided to walk to work
"We look the same. Carlyn's Asian. I'm Asian." - Me
"No one said it was medieval. I just said it was an excellent dragon." - Sebass
"I LIKE FROLICKING!"
"No matter where you are, if someone says, 'hands go up,' everyone's hands go up. And they stay there." - Hutch or Baudot--I don't remember
*Italians make inappropriate jokes about water bottles*
"Peter looked a lot like Dr. Sebastian does in the morning, kind of bumbling around." - TerTer
"That kiss led to...what kisses often lead to." - Sebass, on subtext and Paolo and Francesca
Me: Hi Chris! Hi Jeff!
Jeff: A BIRD SHIT ON MY HEAD.
"Even though they have these traits that make them kind of...stupid." - Carlyn, on men
SPECIAL EDITION: QUOTES FROM THE SHORT BUS
"We forced every Italian off the bus!" *next stop: Italian lady gets off* "NOW WE FORCED EVERY ITALIAN OFF THE BUS!"
"I'M A BEAST!" - Mirau
"The door ate me!" - Sebass
"Our group would be on the short bus." - Hutch
"There are no short buses, only short people." - Me
"I almost fell in an old man's lap!" - Kathryn
"I no speak English." - lady who took one look at us and decided to walk to work
"We look the same. Carlyn's Asian. I'm Asian." - Me
"No one said it was medieval. I just said it was an excellent dragon." - Sebass
"I LIKE FROLICKING!"
"No matter where you are, if someone says, 'hands go up,' everyone's hands go up. And they stay there." - Hutch or Baudot--I don't remember
*Italians make inappropriate jokes about water bottles*
"Peter looked a lot like Dr. Sebastian does in the morning, kind of bumbling around." - TerTer
"That kiss led to...what kisses often lead to." - Sebass, on subtext and Paolo and Francesca
Fail Day (that then turned into a win)
Yay for pride! Though you can barely see it. :P
Today got off to a slow start. I slept a full night for the first time in about a week, got up at 10, and prepared myself to tackle the list of places Sister TerTer had laid out for us. Antonia was going to come with me, along with Kirby, who's in town. But we, along with everybody else, forgot about siesta. Rome totally shuts down for like three hours every day. Also, it was Monday, so the Etruscan Museum, one of the sites on our list, was closed. So, with some quick reconfiguring (and our professors being very nice about the situation), class got pushed from 4pm to 6pm, and we got to go out and see San Clemente with the mithraeum underneath as well as Giovanni e Paolo (especially the domus under the church).
I only took a few pictures today of these sites because they didn't really allow pictures, but there was a spring running underneath San Clemente, so I took a video. :)
I took down a few notes while I was there. We saw frescos and sarcophagi, including a pagan sarcophagus that protrayed the story of Phaedra and Hippolytus. If you don't know that story, it's from Greek mythology, and they told you the story while you were at the site. Hippolytus was the son of Theseus (the founder-king of Athens), and his Roman counterpart is Virbius, a forest god. Hippolytus refused the advances of the married Phaedra, who killed herself in fury after his rejection but left a note making it look like he'd raped her. So, her husband got pissed (or in some cases, Theseus got pissed) and prayed to Poseidon to send a sea monster after Hippolytus. This happened, and the sea monsters got Hippolytus's horses and he was killed. After this, the truth was found out.
Sidenote: Sometimes Carlyn decides to take a flash photo right after a sign tells her not to, and right after she does, this voice comes over the loudspeaker and is like ITALIANITALIANITALIAN PLEASE NO FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY. Haha!
I also saw a fresco of Jesus (though it was extremely hard to make out). However, they found an inscription at the end that said "God have mercy on unworthy John," so they figure that some guy named John made the fresco. That kind of attitude is very much the attitude of ancient artists, I find. Caravaggio felt the same way. There's a pure aspect to it but also kind of a manipulative one. I'm not sure what I think.
I also found a Madonna and child painting from the 8th century. The man who discovered it, Joeseph Mullooly, O.P. (aka Order of Preachers aka DOMINICANS) found it, and the hole that he dug in the wall to get in was still in the wall on the left side of the painting. There was at first a very "precarious" Madonna and child that then fell out to reveal the present one, which was nearly perfectly preserved. Isn't that weird how things happen like that sometimes? The drawing is flanked on either side by paintings of what they think are St. Euphemia and St. Catherine of Alexandria. As all the figures in the paintings are decked in stones and pearls, they think that the paintings are either Byzantine-era or had a Byzantine makeover. I didn't know who St. Euphemia was or St. Catherine of Alexandria (though to be fair, there are a lot of Catherines), so I looked up some information on them:
St. Euphemia lived in the 3rd century and lived in a rich family in Byzantium (which later became Constantinople). From an early age, she was consecrated to remain a virgin. The governor of Chalcedon (around where she lived) said that everyone had to make regular sacrifices to Ares. Euphemia was found in a house with other Christians worshipping God, which was forbidden. She was taken with the others and suffered numerous tortures before she was killed, probably by a wild boar or lion. Because she was the youngest of the group, she received the harshest torture, including the wheel, which involved being tied cartwheel-style to a wheel and being beaten with a hammer that would break bones. One would be left in this state of pain for days. She is often pictured with a wheel for this reason. She can also be pictured with a cross and lions.
St. Catherine of Alexandria's symbol is also a wheel, as she too suffered this torture. She was born to a wealthy pagan family and said that she would only marry the best of men. This brought her attention to Christ, and she converted to Christianity in her early teens. She converted the Emperor's wife and several people brought to her to try and change her mind. She was eventually beheaded after lots of torture.
After San Clemente, we headed to Giovanni e Paolo, the house that at some point belonged to two Christian martyrs. I have a few pictures in here that I took before I was told to stop using my camera (but to be fair, there was no sign that I saw that said not to).
There's a peacock up there, which we all saw immediately, the sign of Juno. Mary's in the pictures too, so there's the parallel between Juno and Mary, who were both queens of heaven. There was a room of the worshipper, characterized by a person who looked like she was worshipping (it was an orante). We also saw some of the waterways that the domus used as well as a wine cellar (or at least that's what the discoverer Father Germano said when he saw it for the first time). There was also a grave that people found and they have no idea who was actually in there (though they have plenty of suggestions, haha).
I found an interesting scene on one of the walls that involved two men pouring drinks for a woman while baby cupids danced in the background. They weren't sure what it was. Suggestions included Proserpina and Hades; Bacchus and Ceres; or Bacchus and Venus Marina. The sea theme was very prominent.
Other things we saw in the frescos were a lot of geometric shapes like circles and triangles, goats, and ugly faces (demons?).
Sights from the city today!
We headed back for St. John's, super excited that we'd gotten to see everything. We had a little trouble at the Metro stop. One train came by our stop completely empty and didn't even stop, followed by three COMPLETELY FULL trains. We were worried we wouldn't get back on time, but finally, a train came with enough elbow room for all of us. We squeezed in and switched to the red line fine, though I had to get a little belligerent (and, well, Italian) with people in trying to get off.
I was proud of myself.
Today, in class, we furthered the theme of mockery in the Bible in order to discredit or delegitimize people. Three ways they do this to kings are portraying him as grossly obese, effeminate (or gay), or as terrified. We also learned that calling someone bald or referring to someone has having a hunchback was a huge offense in Rome. Then, we discussed kings Herod, Eglon, and Belshazzar and how these themes apply to them.
Belshazzar ends up being slain, by the way--right after Daniel tells him what the invisible hand writes on his wall for him. Like that night. Ouch.
After class, Carlyn, Lauren, Jacob, and I went out to dinner and ended up running into the Fab Squad (aka Sebass, TerTer, and Elizabeth). We had dinner together, where Carlyn had FRENCH FRIES (yeah, I know, right?).
Of course, I had to try one then.
It was pretty good!!!
After, we all got gelato, and there's this ridiculous rum chocolate gelato that tastes like someone put gelato into a tub and just poured a bottle of rum over it (seriously, let's face it--that probably happened). RIDICULOUS.
Flavors of Gelato Kylee Has Had So Far in Italy
- Peach
- Coconut
- Lemon
- Chocolate
- Cinnamon
- Almond
- Hazelnut
- Strawberry
- Yogurt
SO GOOD. I can't wait to have more. I had pizza tonight with anchovies and capers, so I'm still downing gallons of water. It was totally worth it, though.
Tomorrow, we head for Ostia Antica, which is a WHOLE CITY OF ANCIENT ROME. It was a harbor city, to be exact, for the Mediterranean, and it sat at the mouth of the Tiber River, about 30 km to the west of Rome. I've heard about it before in Latin class but never looked into it that much. I'm really looking forward to this. :)
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