Thursday, September 18
Roman Types
The wonderful Roman appetite for the strange never ceases to amaze me. Maybe it's that, or perhaps they just refuse to give a darn about how strange or silly or solemn they seem. For example, there's an elderly gentleman who, while poor, does not seem a beggar. However, he spends every day inexplicably lounging in a deck chair by the transept of Sant' Andrea delle Valle, a discarded street sign at his side like a warrior's cast-down shield. He doesn't really seem to do much of anything.
Then there's the odd fellow I saw vigorously massaging a fountain last night, or the daring young dandy I saw walking down a sidestreet attired in a cheap rumpled glen plaid suit, white shoes and an enormous straw hat that looked like something straight out of nineteeth-century Cuba. I'm not sure which are dressed stranger: the pale, well-coiffed Barbie-faced mannequins in the windows of the Via del Corso or the reasonably-lifelike women who occasionally imitate them. Or not, as in the case of the gaudy girl in red kneesocks and a perilously short skirt that walked past us in front of the Vittoriano.
You already heard about the pseudo-centurions, of course; I keep running into them, including nearly a whole cohort on the north side of the Forum with their own eagle and I suppose their own Caesar, as there appeared to be a throne but I couldn't figure out which one was Mr. Gaius Julius himself. And then there's the guy in our neighborhood who walks up to girls and screams at them and, his job done, simply walks away. Baroque may be about heathly emotion and intellect, but I suppose it can fry your brain, too.
The wonderful Roman appetite for the strange never ceases to amaze me. Maybe it's that, or perhaps they just refuse to give a darn about how strange or silly or solemn they seem. For example, there's an elderly gentleman who, while poor, does not seem a beggar. However, he spends every day inexplicably lounging in a deck chair by the transept of Sant' Andrea delle Valle, a discarded street sign at his side like a warrior's cast-down shield. He doesn't really seem to do much of anything.
Then there's the odd fellow I saw vigorously massaging a fountain last night, or the daring young dandy I saw walking down a sidestreet attired in a cheap rumpled glen plaid suit, white shoes and an enormous straw hat that looked like something straight out of nineteeth-century Cuba. I'm not sure which are dressed stranger: the pale, well-coiffed Barbie-faced mannequins in the windows of the Via del Corso or the reasonably-lifelike women who occasionally imitate them. Or not, as in the case of the gaudy girl in red kneesocks and a perilously short skirt that walked past us in front of the Vittoriano.
You already heard about the pseudo-centurions, of course; I keep running into them, including nearly a whole cohort on the north side of the Forum with their own eagle and I suppose their own Caesar, as there appeared to be a throne but I couldn't figure out which one was Mr. Gaius Julius himself. And then there's the guy in our neighborhood who walks up to girls and screams at them and, his job done, simply walks away. Baroque may be about heathly emotion and intellect, but I suppose it can fry your brain, too.
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