northampton, ma

Yesterday I had a beautiful walk from my place near Termini to Trastevere. I would guess it to have been 75 degrees, nice breeze, the kind of day where you can walk the entire time in the sun and barely break a sweat. Rome at its best. And as I was crossing the bridge onto Isola Tiberina a question went through my head: why is it that a place full of antiquity like Rome fascinates us whereas modern cities do not? Maybe it seems like a simple question, given that Rome has a long, long history that a place like say Stockton, California doesn't have. But what makes us value history so much? Why do we treasure the old and discard the new as being in some way less interesting?  Why are the grimy and worn down buildings of Venice seen as having 'character' while grimy, worn down inner cities in America are considered 'blight'?  Aesthetics play a big part of it, but I think there's more.

I don't know what it was, maybe the weather, maybe the giant gelato I was eating, but my mind went philosophical and psychoanalytic. Out went a set of logical leaps, first the premise that we don't much like the unknown. The past, unlike the present or future, is known to us to a certain degree. This gives the past value. But the further into the past you go, the less we really know it. This puts the past more and more into the category of the 'unknown' to the point that it creates a bit of mystery. Mystery creates intrigue and intrigue creates interest. Thus we're more apt to find interest in the old architecture and stories of ancient Rome than we are going to find in modern Stockton. I believe the only time in recent history that we as a society valued the future more so than the past was with the Futurist movement in 1900-1920. For them the past represented imperfection whereas the future represented untapped possibilities. I would imagine this mindset to be quite foreign to the average tourist in Rome. Try telling us that the Colusseum is a tired piece of junk after we have travelled 6000 miles to see it.

Now I don't know if these are garbage ideas, it's barely 7am and I can't sleep and my mind is a bit foggy. Likely in a week I'll read this and decide it's crap.  Anyway I'll tell a story.  Yesterday as I was heading back home to my hostel I got on the bus.  The bus was rather full, I was in the back and couldn't see much out front.  The bus sat there for about 5 minutes, not moving.  People started getting off the bus, I was wondering what the heck was going on, and then I finally noticed the bicycles.  I got off the bus to see a giant parade of people on bikes jamming the intersection and completely stopping all traffic.  They were all cheering and chanting and shouting things like "Roma è più bella in bici!" ("Rome is more beautiful on a bike"; basically making the statement that cars are polluters and noisy, and that bikes are the way to go).  It was pretty awesome to see.  I don't know exactly how many people there were but I would guesstimate around 1000.  The Italians in their cars and Vespas weren't so pleased with these statement-making environmentalists, and I witnessed a rather heated argument in the middle of piazza Venezia.  It all was quintisentially Italian, and something that you don't see back in the States, except maybe in San Francisco.  As a lefty liberal I loved the whole thing, even if it did make me walk home.

PS, Mom I ate very healty yesterday. For lunch I had a 4 scoops of gelato and for dinner a pizza.