In other words

Tired of my own thoughts, stale and weak,
I'll let these nobler voices speak.

The Huron Carol –
Father Jean de Brebeuf, 1640
‘Twas in the moon of winter-time
When all the birds had fled,
That mighty Gitchi Manitou
Sent angel choirs instead;
Before their light the stars grew dim,
And wandering hunter heard the hymn:
“Jesus your King is born, Jesus is born,
In excelsis gloria.”

Within a lodge of broken bark
The tender Babe was found,
A ragged robe of rabbit skin
Enwrapp’d His beauty round;
But as the hunter braves drew nigh,
The angel song rang loud and high.
“Jesus your King is born, Jesus is born,
In excelsis gloria.”

O children of the forest free,
O sons of Manitou,
The Holy Child of earth and heaven
Is born today for you.
Come kneel before the radiant Boy
Who brings you beauty, peace and joy.
“Jesus your King is born, Jesus is born,
In excelsis gloria.”


Christmas: 1924 -- Thomas Hardy
“Peace upon earth!” was said. We sing it
And pay a million priests to bring it.
After two thousand years of mass
We’ve got as far as poison-gas.


The Holly-bough – Charles Mackay
Ye who have scorn’d each other,
Or injured friend or brother,
In this fast fading year;

Ye who, by word or deed,
Have made a kind heart bleed,
Come gather here.

Let sinn’d against, and sinning,
Forget their strife’s beginning,
And join in friendship now;

Be links no longer broken,
Be sweet forgiveness spoken
Under the Holly-bough.

Ye who have loved each other,
Sister and friend and brother,
In this fast fading year;

Mother and sire and child,
Young man and maiden mild,
And let your hearts grow fonder,
Come gather here;

And let your hearts grow finder,
As Memory shall ponder
Each past unbroken vow:

Old loves and younger wooing
Are sweet in the renewing
Under the Holly-bough.

Ye who have nourish’d sadness.
Estranged from hope and gladness,
In this fast fading year;

Ye with o’erburden’d mind,
Made aliens from your kind,
Come gather here.

Let not the useless sorrow
Pursue you night and morrow,
If e’er you hoped, hope now—
Take heart, uncloud your faces,
And join in our embraces
Under the Holly-bough.


Ring Out, Wild Bells
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

losing my voice

With this bout of asthma, I am grateful that I actually have not lost my singing voice. Two years ago I did, right before a concert, and was worried I wouldn’t be able to even speak to announce that I wouldn’t be singing. I did hobble through the program though, having not been able to phonate for days.

After about two months of my current lung woes, my cough is finally going away; I was even able to exercise for the first time in many weeks, taking deep breaths and scampering on the elliptical machine as if I were born to it. But my singing has not come easily this semester though, thanks to the asthma, (which made my voice respond as flexibly as a rusty tool) and to my airhead teacher, whose unprofessionalism and slim advice left me with little to learn from.

(An aside: I once lost my speaking voice some 10 years ago, before I started singing. I was playing in the orchestra for a summer stock company on Cape Cod, performing nine shows in 10 weeks, rehearsing in the morning and playing in the evening six days a week (two shows on Thursdays). Sniffles ran quickly through our close quarters in the inn (the room I shared with six other girls was nicknamed The Orphanage), and my cough turned inexplicably to laryngitis. It was awesome. My horn playing took on new dimensions, as, having no other alternative, my instrument became my voice.

After Rome, that was the best summer of my life. It was music theater boot camp, but spending every afternoon on the beach, hanging out with clean-cut, all-American, chipper young performers, and playing music does not constitute torture. When I arrived I was just beginning to do damage control from an evil relationship that had ended months before, and I came to the Cape renouncing men.

“Where will you be living?” A friend had asked.

“All together in one big house that’s a stroll away from the beach.”

“Just how many seconds will it take before you hook up with someone?” She demanded.

Touché, my friend. My sourpuss feelings evaporated when I walked into the inn’s lounge, (looking cute, I imagine, in my white sundress with the flowers and butterflies) and met THE four cutest guys in the company: a blonde, a redhead and two brunettes, this being a music theater troupe after all. Without thinking, I slipped into my goofball, all-smiles routine. “You know that new horn player?” Said the blonde, as was later reported to me by the redhead. “She’s mine!”

But my memory brings to mind that flame-colored hair, endless ivory skin and, on one occasion, a walk on the nighttime beach, which was illuminated with purple flashes from a distant storm. We returned to the inn, and I struggled to scrape the sand out of my hair as we stopped in the yard to chat and watch the rabbits in the grass. “You are… breathtakingly beautiful,” his baritone voice soothed, but I was the one who was breathless. (Freak out not, Mom and Dad, there are no more details than that to divulge.) But I digress. I digress, I digress.)

Back to the present time.

During this busy month of illness and performances, ill-supported by a shapeless voice teacher, I felt that I couldn’t keep up vocally. I had time to learn the pieces, pretty much, but not work them into my voice, so my concerts felt ill-prepared. As with exercise, I am now easing myself back into practice, singing at length and gently trying to acclimate the muscles. The first few days of this process are rather squawky.

But I also feel that I have little grip on my written “voice.”

“Why don’t you write fiction?” A new companion has asked. The ability to create something from absolutely nothing is to me what the ability to sing is to some people: a divine anointment bestowed on only the few, those heavenly beings resembling angels more than men. I realize that fiction and poetry writers are as much a dime-a-dozen as singers are, but truly, I’m fairly certain I am not capable of creative writing.

As a musician, I am an interpretive artist. Put the finished work before me and I can bring it to life. In the orchestra, this involves matching your articulation to the rest of the section, deciding how a Mozart sforzando should be different from the same marking in Wagner, and above all, following the man with the stick. In opera, it’s about singing an aria louder, higher, and presumably more beautiful than the thousands of singers who have sung the same piece before you. For early music, which challenges performers to compose and improvise as much as jazz musicians, you must learn the vernacular of ornamentation in different national styles and time periods: embellishments for an early 17th century French song are very different than an Italian song form the same time. The English and Germans are different too, but what about the German composer who studied in Rome? Or an 18th century composer writing in the “ancient” style? But the many rules you need to follow actually give you more choices, and before you know it you have enough colors on your palate to make the piece your own.

Yet it’s not creativity. It’s assembling data and reshuffling pieces. I can only take the same approach when I “ornament” with words. I take my stories, find mellifluous ways of expressing them, and put them on the page. This summer, where walking through the Roman cityscape made my days seem like waking dreams, my stories wrote and embellished themselves. Here with the Puritans, I’ve had less material for inspiration, but no matter where I am in the world I cannot venture out of my reality. The obvious result of this is that I will simply run out of material someday; maybe then I will have the courage to use my imagination.

Writing this now, I feel my ideas rise, smolder, and vanish before they get to the page. Perhaps if I had a more creative sense, my writing would develop on its own, become a different universe from my narrow reality, teaching me new ideas and adding depth to my feelings. Perhaps. Maybe I'm just suffering from blog depression: http://www.thenonist.com/downloads/thenonist_blog_depression.pdf

I would like to end this discourse with a concise, elliptical, and deeply beautiful couplet that summarizes my thoughts and brings a tear to the eye. I wish I could, but I don’t know how.

The most mysterious email I've ever received

Hi, are you the same Amanda Keil that used to be fathandsammysmom on parents.com? If so, please don't erase my email. It is extremely important that I talk to you..

Thank you,

Janice M.

Instead of blogging I've been translating...

Douce Beauté (anonymous, 17th century air de cour)    

Douce beauté, doux attraits, douce flame,
O douce voix, et doux ris, et doux pleurs,
Vous n’estes que feinte et douceurs;
Si vous l’estiés au vray, vous me rendriés mon ame.

Prier, pleurer, et ne voir point esmeuë
Ceste douceur dont vous m’entretenés,
Fait dire qu’à tort vous prenés
Le nom d’une vertu qui vous est inconnuë.

De m’afranchir d’amour je désespere,
Ceste rigueur cependent durera,
De ma constance on me louera,
De vostre cruauté vous aurés vitupère.

D’estre cruelle, hélas! Qui voudroit l’estre?
Onc en amour de nom ne se trouva;
Ce luy qui premier l’eprouva
Sans cœur en l’estomac malheureux devoit naistre.

Soyés moi donc douce, douceur, doucette,
Sans la douceur la beauté se perdra,
Douceur feinte ne durera.
Durés douceur, m’amour en durera plus nette.


Sweet beauty, sweet charms, sweet flame,
Oh sweet voice, and sweet laughter, and sweet tears,
But your sweetness is only feigned;
If your were true, you would give me back my soul.

To pray, weep, and never see the break of dawn
This is the sweetness you keep alive for me,
This is the harm you do, to take
The name of a virtue that is unknown to you.

To free myself from love I despair,
This harshness, however, endures,
For my fidelity I am praised,
For your cruelty you are slandered.

To be this cruel, alas! Who would like to be?
One in love does not find this word;
It is that which is first encountered
Without heart in the stomach, sorrow must be born.
Be sweet to me then my sweet, gentleness,  
     sweetness.
Without gentleness, beauty is lost,
Feigned gentleness does not endure.
Be sweet, my love will last more purely.


Words in bold indicate ornament placement.
(Translation: Amanda Keil)

A raisin, or how about a date?

If a relationship is a sunny day, the breakup is a thunderstorm.  Afterwards, the sky is cloudy, leaves and branches clutter the streets, and a cold wind blows.  The clearing up of this scene can take some time; I’d give it a few months, or even, if it was a stormy story to start with, twice the length of the relationship itself.  (It’s something to keep in mind.)

But eventually you get to a point of equilibrium.  Your bittersweet – or just bitter – feelings have more or less been put to bed, your body adjusts to its renewed singleness (ahem), and you embrace your routine and daily life.  It’s a peaceful place to be, actually.  No one to answer to, and open possibilities.  

But somewhere in the back of your head, there’s the nag.  It won’t come at first.  But if you haven’t found someone else a year (and there are lonely lapses throughout that year) after breaking up, the seeds of hysteria start to sprout.  OK, I shouldn’t speak generally.  Maybe just for those of us ladies who are approaching a certain age…

Anyway, in some ways, I’m now enjoying this calm between boyfriends.  There’s some lonesomeness, but it’s a bit of space to refocus, think about my work and my future for a while.  (As if I never stopped thinking about those things even ONCE when I was involved!)  I’m just young enough to believe that I needn’t consign myself to spinsterhood, but old enough to know how to go about finding someone, and to understand my feelings.

I’ve learned that I know the kind of rapport I’ll have with a person the instant I lay eyes on them.  I accepted a job two years ago even though I had a bad feeling about my boss-to-be.  For the first eight months of the job I would be her punching bag.  Many jobs ago I met my beautiful colleague, who didn’t return my smile.  We wouldn’t work especially well together, but our friendship continues to this day.  And a blinking young man with a classic haircut, whose eyes grew wide when he first saw me, he would be a lover for a while.  Unfortunately, my clairvoyance has its limits, and seems particularly strong only in retrospect.  That boss nearly killed me with stress, that boyfriend made me feel lower than low.  

In a favorite short story of mine, the narrator describes the moment she meets the man who will change her life: “I haven't had this feeling in so long I don't even recognize it; at first I think it's fear.  My hair follicles seem to individuate themselves and freeze; then it's like my whole body flushes.”  Another woman wrote that within 15 minutes of meeting the man she would marry, she knew had found him.  

I do believe I’ve had parts of this sort of moment over the years.  Parts, but certainly not the whole.  

Life in a city without a car is very public.  Your walk to the train encounters neighbors, you stand with a crowd during the commute, and come across even more people on your way to work or school.  As I did when I lived in New York, I find myself semi-hoping that Mr. Fantastic will sit next to me on the subway, open the door for me at Starbucks, or simply chat me up from out of the blue.

Occasionally these prayers are answered by an angel with a mischievous sense of humor.

In September, when the evenings were still long but the light was beginning to be honeyed by the sun, I sometimes sat in the public garden reading my New Yorker.  Once, I sat on a bench, enjoying the company of Adam Gopnik and fatefully wearing a cute dress. The lanky shadow of a skinny man and his bike drew near.  He asked me if I knew if there was a grocery store nearby.  Is that a pickup line?? The garden is off of Newbury street, Boston’s Madison Avenue.  I offered whatever advice I could, and he didn’t leave.  He mentioned twice – with a shrug and a flail – that he was divorced, evidently bitter about it, and newly moved here from Texas.  I decided not to bring up the fact that I am angry with all red-state residents.  I noticed how short he was, and that he was probably in his mid-forties.  He asked me what I do and where I lived.  I told him I go to NEC and live in Brookline (lies, lies, lies), and tried to get back to my magazine.  

“Say, do you want to exchange numbers, maybe get together sometime?”  

Thank you Roman men who taught me how to say no!  

“Oh really, are you sure, I mean, maybe just as friends?”  

When a lady declines, Bubba, it does not mean that she needs more convincing.  It means that you are too scrappy.

Health and Wellness

If the worst thing in the world is a sick child, the runner up must be a sick singer.  (Christ, there are many, many worse things than that, but it’s all relative.)  I’m in the cycle of sickness that appears to be my viral destiny nowadays: sore throat, congested chest, asthma symptoms, coughing spasms.  In a latest twist, this has now turned itself to something that requires antibiotics.  It really wouldn’t matter if I didn’t like to sing.  I haven’t lost my voice, but before I start my practice I have to go through a coughing fit before I even sing a note.  My sound is weaker and slightly breathier, especially in my treacherous middle range.

The other drag is that even limited physical activity is hard to take.  Just running for the train or cooking dinner in my tiny kitchen gets me winded.  Exercise is out of the question, so I now feel like a sluggish blob.  But even a mild illness affects my mind just as much as my body.  Since my asthma came back a couple of years ago, every sniffle or bout of allergies goes straight to my chest.  Despite frequent frantic trips to my pulmonologist, maintenance meds, and Advair, it seems that every time it comes back, I feel worse.  If these problems were elsewhere – my stomach, skin, feet, whatever – my brain might be spared as well.  But it’s my lungs that suffer, and with every cough and wheeze, and every time I need to slow down, I’m reminded of my life’s breath, which is only on loan to me for so long.  (OK, time to stop freaking out, the antibiotics are making me better…)

When I’ve been down lately – especially with the disappointments I’ve had with school, and the financial shock that comes with writing just one check in the amount of half your life savings – I’ve perked myself up with a trip to the gym.  In fact, I think of my entire tuition bill as just the price that comes with upgrading to a fabulous gym membership.

And boy, what a gym.  Coming from my cheap-o ghetto experience in NYC, the BU gym is the second coming.  A space so beautiful you want to give concerts there or hang some artwork.  The elliptical machines and treadmills face out onto enormous circular windows, or you can watch the numerous TVs with good sight-lines.  For those of us with no TV to go home to, this is a treat.  The ceilings are high and the climate is always just right.  There’s plenty of equipment, a bunch of classes (none of which I’ve taken….) and best of all, the music is either unobtrusive or turned off entirely.  

But best of all, there’s the pool.  Belonging to a gym with a pool was just too much of a luxury for me in New York.  But now, my gym has two pools!  In Rome, I was tickled by the idea of having a Roman bath in the marble pool I found in Trastevere, but the water was the temperature of sweat and I had to share a lane with grannies and hairy fat men who kept bumping into me.  In New York I would drag myself to the morning swims at the Carmine Recreation Center in the West Village.  It made me feel self-righteous, waking up at six to get there for the 7:00-8:30 window of time they gave you in the frigid outdoor pool.  The perk was the Keith Haring mural along the wall, which I used to spot myself.  But the leather-skinned head lifeguard forbid me from doing the backstroke – someone apparently sued the city when they were bumped into by a backstroker, it is now illegal in New York City pools.

But my pool at BU is a sheer delight.  I usually end up there in the evenings, when it’s less busy.  The lanes are marked slow, fast, medium…. and Amanda.  I often have a lane to myself, or else I get to share with some strapping undergraduate.  (Nothing to make you swim faster than trying to stay ahead of some muscular young thing, unless you’d prefer to get bumped into by him….)  I walk into the water as if I’m stepping onto dry land; I know how an ice cream cone feels when it’s dipped in chocolate sauce.

I’ll swim for 45 minutes or so, crawl going up and backstroke coming back.  Being buoyed by water must be one of the best human experiences.  My breathing falls into rhythm, and when the water covers up my ears, I find the peace I need to collect my thoughts.  I also feel my muscles coming back to life, after a long hiatus from this spring, the last time I worked out regularly.  (Though my numerous romps around Rome must have done something for my thigh muscles, the lifting of copious gelati and my digital camera didn’t do much for the biceps.)  

After a while, I’ll walk past the synchronized swimmers (no joke!) in the other pool and go over to the “spa,” where the hot tub is.  They also have what’s called a lazy river: a meandering loop with a current.  I swim against it for a bit – it’s hard! – then bob along with the flow.  I end my night in the whirlpool, positioning a water jet to massage my back, keeping just my chin and eyes above water, like a frog.

So You Want to Open a Conservatory?

Congratulations!  This investment is a bold step forward towards your personal financial stability!  Despite long-standing rumors of the death of classical music (one if its outstanding features), music conservatories are actually cash producing powerhouses, supported by countless young WASPS with money to burn.  (In other words, there’s a sucker born every minute!!)

In order to build name recognition and tap into a pre-existing market, make your conservatory part of an enormous university.  This will guarantee cash flow for you (all that undergraduate revenue!), and bestow a modicum of class on whatever school you find.  Charge the undergraduates upwards of $35,000 annually.  Trumpet the fact that grad students have it easy when they only pay $20,000 per year.  For decoration, populate the university with gaggles of young women.  Give them looks that only money can buy.  The girls should have nicely highlighted hair, perfectly tweezed brows, tiny waists and enormous breasts.  They should be so large, that if the girl is running late, at least the front half of her will arrive on time.  Contain the knockers in skimpy tank tops, preferably with the midriff exposed. The wearing of sparkly flip-flops is to be strictly enforced.

Music students will require a place to practice.  For every 10 students, there should be one practice room.  Walls should be as paper-thin as possible.  The rooms should be sweltering hot, ill-ventilated, filthy, and stink of multiple human bodies.  If this final condition is not met, a product known as Fart Spray is available from novelty stores.  The practice rooms themselves can be bought for pennies on the dollar from former dictatorships that used them as interrogation rooms: Cambodia, Argentina, and former Soviet satellites are all good places to start!

Music students themselves should be a mixed bunch.  To lend even further validation to your conservatory, operate a militant overseas recruitment initiative.  The international presence will add a certain quel que chose to the atmosphere, making the students feel even more self-important than they already do.  Foreign girls should be slender and beautiful, and chat in their mysterious languages in groups.  Other students should look as young as high school students, garnished with acne and clothed in rags.  Many should smoke.

Staff your conservatory with cute, young administrators.  Provide ample training to make sure they are well-equipped to disperse misinformation and bad advice.  Tell students to address their problems to them, providing a first line of defense.  A quick study of the Byzantine empire will provide a model for your bureaucratic set-up.  Each administrator will have two assistants, who will have a nursery of work-study students to assist them.  Make them all seem so busy that students who actually need their help will feel guilty even walking into their office.

If a student should express interest in studying with a particular faculty member, just remember your mantra: it’s not about the students.  It’s about money.  And paperwork, and marketing and brand imaging and profitability.  Think of your students as stock futures, such as copper, textiles, or sides of beef.  Does it matter if one of those sides of beef has an opinion??  Noooo.  Once they buy into your conservatory you’ve got them over a barrel!  If they’d like to graduate, they’ll do it by your rules and pay your price.  You call the shots!  

So go start a conservatory, start recruiting them cash cows, and count your moo, moo, moolah all the way to the bank!

10.22.76

This will sound ridiculously childish, and I’ve tried to kick the habit, but when my eyes happen to fall on a digital clock bearing the numbers 10:22, my birthdate, I stop for a minute, smile, and think about life. There might be one person reading this who will testify that I sometimes do a little dance too. But the run-up to my actual birthday always involves a good bit of excitement and some reflection.

Long gone are the days when your birthday seems like a national holiday. As a kid, maybe you do have to go to school, but you go there with cake and soda, and everyone gathers around to sing to you. And the parties. How happy was I with pizza and bowling and a million kids running around our neighbor's restaurant? And the presents. Piles of presents. A white box from a department store would yield a terrible moan from the kiddy crowd: "Clothes!" Toys were of course the coveted prize.

Sometime around the age of 15 it becomes apparent that the Earth does not revolve around you on your birthday. I took the PSAT's one October 22nd. College years will be the last time of instant gatherings of friends. Before you know it, you're sobbing in your cubicle, wondering if there could possibly be a worse way to misspend your youth.

For those of us born on the Libra-Scorpio cusp, any pleasant birthday musings come to an abrupt halt shortly after the big day. While the week before is filled with some excitement for me (it’s the 19th, it’s the 20th, we’re getting there!), the days following remind me of the thing gone: the 23rd (still sort of close), the 24th (not my day at all) the 25th (moving on). This inexorable passage of time is not softened by the fact that by this late in the year, we have all fallen into the tar pit of Winter. Did I ever leave the house without a coat and hat? Were my feet ever not freezing? Whatever joy or reflection I feel as I mark another year too easily slips into mind-buckling rage.

Bear with me, reader, as I rant and rave.

Birthdays do not need to be sacred. How many times have I worked on my birthday? But all I ask from the universe, is that my birthday not suck. October 22, 2005, however, had one too many drawbacks. Yes, I had my beloved Vietnamese noodle soup with a lovely friend in the afternoon. Had I done nothing else on that day, I would have gone to sleep happy. But no, although I had looked forward for years to having my birthday on a Saturday, I worked again. A six and a half hour fundraising event that involved me standing around in new uncomfortable shoes, pressing the flesh, and sitting through one too many pitches for donations.

OK, cry me a river. The meal was lovely (steak!), and I like getting dressed up. But at the end of the evening, someone had walked off with my makeup bag. Small emotional loss, but, as I would find out with my first paycheck, replacing the items in the bag would cost me about a half week’s salary. (That is, makeup is ridiculously expensive and I am ridiculously underpaid.) This salary issue is going to come back to bite me. I am 100% committed to grantwriting: it’s creative, interesting, and by non-profit standards, well paid. But here in Boston, although the cost of living is the same as in New York, and the salaries are the same as in Guadalajara.

The fact that I walked home from the event in the freezing rain and was so bone tired that I couldn’t drag myself to a friend’s party also didn’t help create a happy birthday.

For this reason, perhaps, I am somehow more inclined to "celebrate," or at least ponder, little ole me when my numbers come up on the clock rather than the calendar. During my little me-minutes, I think about birthdays past and future, of the me that was and the entirely different one I will become. Of events and people and experiences I can't even imagine right now, that will eventually be memories for another 10.22 moment long down the road. I think of how different I am already from the last birthday, and the one before that. And I give thanks for everyone and everything that I have. But best of all, celebrating yourself by the clock only takes 60 seconds, and unlike a birthday, there's no sense of imperative to have a good time, have some cake, and make the moment outstanding from all the rest. A birthday is just like any other day, but all days are extraordinary.

10.22.76. Just some digits for some other human being. Once a year – but more importantly, twice a day – it’s as if Time greets me personally, kisses me on the cheek and sends me on my way. I'm not the only one to attach importance to these numbers. Just recently, 1,022.76 appeared in my bank account, a way too generous birthday gift from my dear ole dad. Here’s hoping that next year he’ll make it Y2K compliant.    

Roma, continuata

The Forum- Oy the tourists! The ruins of the Temple of Castor and Pollux.




Augustus' Forum, I think? Fragments in a wall of one of the builidings of the Campidoglio.


Borromini's magnificent St. Ivo. The courtyard of the Cancelleria, where cardinals live (including Ratzinger). The architect is unknown.




Renaissance, Medieval, and Baroque, all in one corner! Hydrangea in the Campus Marzius, petals turning white in the sunshine.


A mosaic archway and the nympheum of the Villa Guilia, the airy 16th century palace that Pope Julius the III used not as a residence, but just for a day or an evening of entertainment.


More Renaissance symmetry of the Palazzo di Firenze, which houses, most appropriately, the Dante Alighieri Society.


San Agostino. Its stunning Renaissance facade was built with travertine plundered from the Colisseum.



Vicolo means alley.


A portion of the medieval mosaics in the tiny chapel known as the garden of paradise, in Santa Prassede. The woman with the square halo (for living saints) is Theodora, mother of Paschal I (d. 824).


The charming tortoise fountain of the Piazza Mattei.



I decided to put myself on a diet, but I've only lost lots and lots of time!


A medieval home of a Jewish family (there are Hebrew inscriptions inside).


Santa Cecilia, demonstrating the typical Roman palimpsest: 18th century facade over a medieval portico, 12th century campanile and at the bottom, the top of a classical marble vase. Do you want to guess how many photos I have that look practically identical to this one?

There's something on your face...

As a kid, I wanted to have glasses. I guess you always want what the other kids have, and I thought they were a neat-looking accessory that made you smart and sometimes popular. I would spend time wistfully trying them on at street vendors’ tables.

A couple of years ago, I left work in the evening feeling headachy, and noticed that the world looked blurry. I chalked it up to another day in front of the computer, and that blurry feeling you can get in Midtown. But it was something else. By this year, I couldn’t read signs in the subway from across the platform. And a couple of months ago, while watching a movie with my brother, I couldn’t read the subtitles, just from a few yards away in the living room. He had to tell me what they were saying, as if I were an old lady. And need I mention, the entire summer in Rome, all those ceiling frescoes I was lovingly staring up at probably were not really as Impressionistic as they appeared to me. I could have seen the city even better, it turns out.

Right now, my vision is fine, if just a narrowly defined bit of it. Everywhere I look, my gaze is framed by two blurry rectangles. Inside the rectangles, everything is crystal clear. Outside, the world looks like it’s trying to catch up, moving in a swampy haze.

Mom took me to her eye doctor in August. The doctor dimmed the lights, covered one of my eyes and told me to read the middle line of letters. “Okay, the first one is an S.” “That’s an S?” Exclaimed Mom. It wasn’t a Z or an N either. A similar scene followed with virtually every letter. I was so frustrated that I started to cry. The tears actually served as lenses, magnifying the images a bit, so I was able to read a little a better. “You’re definitely nearsighted,” pronounced the doctor. “Could it be that six years in front of a computer did this to me?” I asked. “Nothing you did or can do will affect your vision,” he replied. “Is it just my destiny?” I wiped my eyes.

To me, people with glasses seem to demand a more gentle treatment. I view them the same way I would a pregnant woman, or someone in a wheelchair. So now I get to look all intellectual, demand a little extra special care, and -what I’ve always found sexy when guys have done it to me- take off my glasses when I start to kiss a boy. But then again, boys don’t make passes at…..

Roma!

A sacrificial altar in the middle of Campus Marcius, where gladiators once trained.


My street, via Luigi Santini.


One of Bernini's Moor fountains on Piazza Navona.



I'm not making it up, this is my name on a (Roman? Early Christian?) fragment in the portico of San Silvestro. What could it mean?? The photo on the left doesn't look like much, but it is what's left of the octaganal room in the Domus Aurea (Golden House) of Nero.



The angel on top of the Castel, right before a lightning storm. The fountain of Piazza (traffic circle) della Repubblica. The statues are of tritons wrestling niads. They ap[parently looked like they were having too much fun, so the fountain caused a bit of a scandal.




Stunning views from Castel Sant'Angelo.



Two examples of Borromini's wonderfully unique Baroque style: San Carlino and the ministry of propaganda (really, that's what it's called). Note the convex/concave play of both facades.



Just a random courtyard in my neghborhood in Trastevere. Pretty sweet, no? And this is one of the eight elaborate Barberini coat of arms (with the telltale bees) designed by Bellini, which line the baldacchino of the papal altar in St. Peter's. The story goes that Urban VIII commissioned it as a thank offering for a niece who almost died in childbirth. Beneath the scroll is a woman's face, in various expressions of pain. In the final one, there's a laughing child.


The twin churches of Piazza del Popolo, taken from the obelisk in the middle of the square, where I would sit, write, listen to the fountains, and gaze. Sigh....


The ruins of the temple to Fortune in Our Present Day (Caesar was murdered nearby), and the head of the statue of the goddess herself, found in the ruins. Deh! Nasconditi, o Virtù! (from Poppea...)



The unexpected epitaph on Keats' grave, and a weeping angel in the Protestant cemetery.


A dramatic allegory of the faith on the tomb of St. Ignatius. And a street near Piazza Navona, note the window frames now buried under street level!


This medieval fresco in Santa Saba depicts the story of St. Nicholas. On hearing a poor man (lower corner) lament that he had no dowry for his 3 daughters, Nicholas tossed a bag of money through their window. And thus the holiday shopping season was born.


The 2-hour line to get into the Vatican Museums (a portion), and the enormous river god (also a portion) who lives inside, along with just a few other works of art.



Women in Black Against War. They're international, I think they assemble in front of the library in New York as well. I went up to them with mom and introduced ourselves as "quacchere" (Quakers). They seemed please to meet us!


A sneaky mosaic!


A fragment from what must have been an enormous statue (the figure is unidentified) and just a small part of a sepulchre frieze, depicting a Roman triumph over the barbarians.


The weird-looking lunch they gave me on my flight to Vienna. Watch for it on airlinemeals.net!


A statue of saint Istvan (Stephen), the church, and cousin Mike in downtown Köszeg, Hungary.


The tallest obelisk in Rome, outside of San Giovanni. Rome has more obelisks then Egypt-I'm so proud! A classic cupid statue as well.


The interior of the Colosseum..... and the so-called Square Colosseum of Mussolini's time. The inscription reads: "A nation of poets, artists, heroes, saints, thinkers, scientists, navigators, and transcenders." Ma dai!



This modern church was built to be Mussolini's tomb, had he not been hanged and dismembered by that nation of poets, artists, heroes, etc. The strong wall separating the forum of Augustus from the fire-prone suburra, where the classic Roman hoi polloi lived.


Part of a Renaissance facade along the elegant Via Giulia. I wonder which victims this sign refers to.


An elaborate mosaic floor and ruins of a ninfeo at emporer Hadrian's Villa, his country retreat in nearby Tivoli.


Porta San Sebastiano, leading out to the Via Appia. An angel etched into the porta's travertine.


Basalt slabs on the Via Appia Antica (note the wagon grooves), and cypresses along the way.


Bougainvillea blooms.


The Piazza di Pietra (stone). The Palatine with the Circus Maximus (it's just
that grassy bit in front.)