My Body is a Temple...and I am Decorating It. [my new TAT]

So there was never a doubt in my mind [despite what I may have said to my mother] that I was going to leave Italy with a new tattoo. So here it is! My newest addition!
















Just a quick explanation of my design...
Its a combination of a compass and a clock. The compass to symbolize my traveling here and hopefully the traveling that I get to continue to do through out my life. The clock to symbolize the time that is always ticking away. And at the top of the clock is '1987', the year I was born. The single hand of the compass/clock is a short moment away from ticking back to the top of the clock, 1987, the moment life began and eventually will end. George coined the term "The Doomsday Compass", which I kind of like. I know its a bit morbid, but its my constant and permanent reminder of my own mortality and to keep living every moment like its the final moment and there won't be another moment like it again.

A Day in the Park [Florence]

It has become a habit of mine to venture out to the park near my apartment and read my novel and take in the beautiful weather. For the past two weeks it has been sunny with temperatures in the high fifties and sixties. The best part is the weather is only going to get nicer the longer I am here.
Their are always interesting thoughts going through my head as I try to find an open seat on a park bench, which are always somewhat occupied at all times during the day. Are there any completely empty benches? No? Do I want to sit next that guy? Does he want me to sit next to him? What if he starts to speak to me in Italian and I answer back with my dumb ass "Mi dispiace, Non Palro Italiano"? What if he does speak some English and I can have a real good conversation with him? But no matter what, I always end up sitting next to someone and they may nod or greet with a "Buongiorno" or "Ciao", but over all it seems that they barely even realize that anyone else is near them if they're not in conversation with someone else.
And I may read for a while, then try to enjoy the sun, usually with some music playing through my ipod. I look up from my book, maybe glance across the gravel walk to the bench and the man simply sitting there. All he has with him is a bottle of water which he may occasionaly take a sip of. He watches people with out realizing that I am watching him. The term "peole watching" seems like such a stalker-ish phrase...almost prying or intruding on someone else's private thoughts and actions. But it actually isn't that at all, despite what how the term makes me feel. It is more like "people glancing". Just a small peak at someone as they pass by, coupled with your own little analysis which is probably eighty percent incorrect but still interesting.
So I sit there and "people glance" at the man across from me who is "people glancing" at other people as they stroll by, and I realize that all he has with him was this bottle of water. It was just him, the park bench, the bottle of water, the sun, and his own thoughts. I began to think about what he could be thinking about. How could he sit there so long with out moving, with out music or a book? Then I slightly turn my head to the right to the man sitting next to me, who I had asked so many questions to myself about as I walked up to the open seat next to him. He had a book...but he wasn't reading it. At one point he was as I approached him. But now it just sat in his hand on his lap. He wasn't looking at it or reading it. He wasn't even "people glancing". He was just looking, not sure if he was even looking at anything in particular. His eyes weren't glazed or lazy the way they get when you fall in to a deep thought or day dream, but they weren't strained or fixed, the way you would stare at something when your thinking about that one thing. He was obviously thinking about somthing, but it couldn't be anything of any great importance. Both of these men, co-inhabiting the park with me on this beautiful day. Both living, breathing, thinking, but not much more than that. And here I am. Attempting to read my novel, trying to ignore the bombardment of my random thoughts and daydreams. I have music playing in my ears from my ipod. I have my phone on lap so that the vibrations from a friends call with the next thing to do today will stir me from my reading. Why do I have so much going on? Is that wrong? To be non-stop the way I am? I remember thinking, even before I walked out the door of my apartment, 'OK, I'll go read and enjoy the weather for an hour or so and hopefully Frank will call before I get too bored with that and I can move on to the next part of my day." I know that I can't sit still. And I like that about myself. I always need the next event, next hair cut, next tattoo, I can sleep when I am dead. But here I am next and across from two men who are showing a true display of this cliche "European mentality" that you always hear about. Just sitting in the middle of a work day, in a park with just them, the bench, the sun, and their thoughts. They were both there before me. And I'm sure they sat there long past the time I left. I sit there and think to myself 'Am I missing out on somthing?'.
So I take one more "people glancing" look at the man across from me and then one more to the man directly to my right, who has shifted positions and set his book down between us on the bench. I set my novel next to his. I open my ipod case, unlock it and press pause once, then twice to shut the screen off. I take the ear buds out of my ear and wind them around my ipod. I shift positions and cross my legs. And there I sat with my two friends in the park. Not reading or staring or focusing on anything in particular. Just thinking casually about what ever came to mind.

There's a McDonalds right across from the Pantheon! [ROME]

Think about the oldest building in the United States...
Maybe...MAYBE four hundred years old...at best...
I walked through buildings and climbed monuments pushing THREE THOUSAND years old in Rome! Building that were built one thousand years before Christ was born! It is absolutely astounding to be alive, in the year 2009, walking on the same stone roads, sipping from the same public fountain, leaning on the same Portland cement wall...that a Roman could have been walking, sipping, or leaning on some two thousand years before me.

So this post is going to be short and sweet...for a number of reasons.
1.)That's how my trip to Rome was...three short, sweet days of seeing everything there is to see in Rome [I'll go through that later]
2.)I'm really behind on my blog and I'm gonna shoot them at you rapid fire here to get caught up before I leave for Spring Break
3.) Its absolutely beautiful outside [mid 60s!] and I wanna go back outside instead of sit here on my computer

So here it is...Rome [short and sweet]

+MUST SEE: The Roman Forum/Imperial Forums [this is where these ancient building are]. Get a tour guide if you can...or at least a book. There is so much to be learned there.

+Our Roman Forum tour guide was one of the highlights of the whole trip. His name was Yan and he was absolutely insane. He started off by introducing himself as a ridiculously fast walker and that if any of us didn't think we could keep up to just quit now. No sooner did he say that, he was gone. Already half way up a set of Roman stairs, basically sprinting. As we sprinted with him he would ask our names, just casually. By the end of our 3 hour tour [nothing like Gilligan's] he and his photographic memory had all 25 of our names memorized. He pointed at each of us in a line and said our names. You could tell he had a photographic memory because when he would lecture, he would do it with his eyes closed, just like he was reading off of his note cards behind his eye lids. He could rattle of dates and names with out pausing to think, he admitted to smoking alot of pot, told us that as Americans we had to watch out for Belgium [where he was from] because they already stole our beer, and bet us a Belgium beer when asking us hard questions. Basically, the best tour guide...ever. And to sum it all up, when leaving, Yan said, "Thats all. I see you...in hell I guess. See you."









+MUST SEE: St. Peter's Basillica. Check out Bernini's Piazza out front. Go inside, see his Baldiquin. See Michelangelo's Pieta. Then climb to the top of the dome. Its even higher than the one here in Florence.









+MUST SEE: The Sistine Chapel. Its a short walk from St. Peters to the Vatican Museum where it is located. They say no pictures and to please be quiet, but every single person was taking pictures and talking as loudly as they please...kinda ruined the moment for me but it is still beautiful.











+MUST SEE: The Pantheon...and grab some lunch at the Mickey-D's right across from it.

+MUST SEE: The Trevi Fountain. Its an amazing sculptural fountain that takes up the entire facade of a building. It depicts the both beautiful and destructive, force of water.











+MUST SEE: The Colosseum. Another space that astounds you with its beauty, its massiveness, and its age. Try to watch Gladiator right before also...it'll get you all jacked up.

+Get dinner at a place called Magnolia near Piazza Navona. Great food and...

=BIRRA OF THE BLOG=
That's right...it can just pop up just like that. Wham! While at Magnolia try one of their specialty beers called Devils Kiss. Its apparently very tough to find but its a Strong Ale brewed somewhere in Scotland. Lord only knows what it was doing in Rome, but it was delicious.

So we did all of that, plus a shit ton more, plus we found enough energy to go out and party a bit at night [go figure]. But what's funny is the smaller simpler things are becoming the most fun and memorable. Quick example: one of the funnest things looking back at Rome [other than Yan the crazy tour guide], was running through the metro not exactly sure if we going the right way, a little buzzed on cheap wine, just laughing at our indecisiveness. We were trying to make it to the colloseum before it closed at 5pm. And the colloseum was amazing, don't get me wrong, I just think it's interesting how a moment like that in the Metro, buried underneath three thousand years of brick foundations and history, a moment like that, just with friends and excitement, no monuments or tourist traps, will stick out in my mind forever.














Footnotes:
+The list above is just the highlights of Rome. There is always more to see/do/experience

+Miss everyone back in the States! Hope all is well!