ROME IV

May 14, 2015

Melancholy this morning. There’s always this morning at some point in the journey. Who are you roaming the ancient streets? Will your shadow even cast upon the stones?

Will and I had one of those five hour Italian suppers last night at his favorite establishment. Long, long talk, many revelations. He mentioned the startling fact, “I have known you all my life.” One never thinks of oneself in that way.

Pain in the foot almost unendurable. I hobble for hours, miles, yet hobble I do.

Went online to discover that someone has hacked my OptionsXpress account, and sold 100 shares of GOOGL. The money is still there. . . but. . . also 1000 bogus email messages. Frantically changing all passwords. It is 2 AM there, and I must wait to get anybody alive.

5 PM. Financial panic calmed. I must assume that whoever it was meant, or was capable of, no more than mischief, for I can’t figure how he actually meant to get the money out.

Hiked–limping all the way– to il Colloseo and the Forum, through Constantine’s arch to Saint John Lateran, which is the first destination which is absolutely new to me. Big Baroque church, with the giant stone saints all about exhibiting their attributes. It would exhaust me just to walk the whole way to the Pope’s throne. Bought a grass-green glass rosary to remember it by.

So, here I am, lounging on a bed in Rome, listening to the street noises, to a hearty laughing Roman woman, wondering why my father never loved me. What a thing the mind is! This probably springs from Will’s conversation about his parents, his love and respect for them, his longing for them at this distance, things so far removed from my experience that I have half imagined people are making them up. All through my life I noticed this and wondered about the source of it, why my parents weren’t–what shall I say?– attached to me in the way other parents seemed to be. No answer at all. I think it must have been my fault, but I cannot fathom how– it was so long ago. What could I have done? What could they? It was not a natural thing.

Brilliant green parrots blast through the air streaming behind them bits of grass for their nests.

The church bells chime “Pange lingua gloriosa” at evening.