From Elizabeth's post:
"It takes a traveler mere minutes in Rome to understand why she is called the “Eternal City.” Speeding from the airport, the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica suddenly looms from beyond the Vatican walls and time seems to turn in on itself. Insta-communications and all the glories of the present age become as passing fancies—the grass that withers and fades. To watch the sun rise over domes and spires and to consider the mostly-anonymous human beings who labored to produce them, is to feel keenly one’s own smallness and mortality, and to make peace with both.
"Rome’s recklessness is utterly at odds with the precision of her architecture. Drivers chatter amiably, turning to gesture at their passengers even as they are merging into traffic while sending a text-message and answering a dispatch. Pedestrians, cars, buses, and trucks seem engaged in an endless game of “Frogger,” one where drivers affect a grudging respect for those who dare to step off a curb beyond the crosswalk, and pedestrians tempt fate, and it is all of a piece; in an eternity-minded city, everything boils down to a shrug. Danger, like a day, is a state of mind..."
Continue reading HERE.
