21st-God came Early

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The sun broke from over the Vatican walls as though guided by a masons plumb line, a razor of light opaque enough to steer the focus of my lense. Natural artifice, smog, or the sheer gravity of gods greatest edifice, never have I seen sun so visual. When it falls without impediment, it drowns the roman spaces in a luminous sheet that works against the dimension of the city, flattening it's hills and domes. I don't need to throw money into the trevi fountain to return here, because the Sistine chapel is inexplicably closed today, and as tomorrow is sunday and our final one here in Rome, I will have missed the biggest tourist attraction in Italy. Oops. The pantheon is next, a thorougly stunning cylindrical occulus in the best state of repair in all Rome, because of course, it was converted to a church thereby preserving the stone in the wake of the churches many building projects throughout history. The niches are occupied with holy figures of course, and the sense of them not belonging is palpable. I see in my minds eye, towering phidian apollos and Dioscuri. And greeted by diminutive, languid apostles, even painting pushed into the naves, beneath the smaller arches for lesser godlings, now empty above catholic requilaries like the gouged sockets of an unrepentant Anglican. Is that a mcdonalds I see before me? I drown my desire to behold striding pagan deities in a big mac. A long meandering walk in the neighborhood later in the evening increases my girth some by further adventures in pizza. My stomach is beginning to look distinctly..fertilized. I hope I remain spry enough to dodge the copious coils of dog shit, lying like landmines beneath the umber leaves.

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This page contains a single entry by allan published on May 5, 2010 10:03 AM.

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