Coming home....

It's not dark yet.....

Shadows are falling.....

Trenitalia Frecciarossa 9626 pulls out of Roma Termini punctually at 10.45.  We outstrip the Autostrada del Sole, reaching speeds of up to 300 kph, while the landscapes slip effortlessly by. The long shadows of grey-green olive trees darken the close cropped fields in the autumn sunshine; yellowing vine leaves tinge the slopes of Tuscany, the mountains hover blue in the background.

After 724 kms (450 miles) and just three stops (Bologna, Milano and Torino Porta Susa) we reach Torino Porta Nuova on time at 15.13, having crossed the mighty Po and its wide valley, Lombardy poplars, church towers and the occasional factory chimney punctuating the orchards and rice fields of the flatlands.

Behind every beautiful thing there’s been some kind of pain

I have been to Torino several times before - I know I was there on August 25th, 1979, on August 3rd, 1980, (having just passed through Bologna station the day before the bombing that killed 85 people, on my way to join my family camping in the Val Veny, just under Monte Bianco), and again on a bitingly frosty January 1st, 1990 when I took the 06.25 train out to photograph the Abbazia di Santa Maria di Staffarda.....  At the time I wrote about myself as an empty-bellied, thin-clothed, hollow-souled pilgrim, heading vaguely for spiritual and physical comfort, even if the journey is wearisome and awkward. Why?  For a focus, a fireplace in the mind, something to give a gleam of hope in the dark pre-dawn..... The weeds are crisp with thick white frost.... Brina in threads of white on my jacket; stamping, freezing, hands red cold, breath white, all quiet, the countryside shrouded in white; white, crystal chandelier trees, white air, white fields. A dog barks, not much else stirs, the sun like a communion wafer in the white sky..... The photos I must have somewhere, but little else remains.

Anyway, those were not the only times. Amanda and I once were guests here of our friends Chris and Colin McLean, but I am not sure when that was..... And I know that one time I scaled 85 metres of the Mole Antonelliana (whose full height is 167.5 metres).... and on this occasion I wanted to do that again, so I dropped my bag off at the Hotel Roma e Rocca Cavour and hurried through the streets to the Mole, only to find a queue, and to be told that said queue was only for the National Cinema Museum and that the lift to the viewing stage was full..... 

I kicked myself for not having booked in advance, but with my vague memories of visiting this city in the past I had not expected that there would be tourists here.  I remember distinctly being alone atop the vertiginous tower, though I cannot now trace any photographs I must have taken.  How is it that even in the dead of autumn these days just about everywhere is teeming with insatiable tourists?

Ah well.  I console myself with a walk by the Po, looking towards the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele I, and the Gran Madre di Dio church:

And I admire a heron fishing the powerful waters:

Then I turn to the extraordinary expanse (360 metres long by 111 metres wide) of the Piazza Vittorio Veneto which was completed in 1825. My knowledge of history is sketchy, but I do know that this city was the capital of the Duchy of Savoy, and then, for a few years in the 1860s, it stood as the capital of unified Italy.....  Although it was badly damaged by bombardments in 1943, the Piazza has been restored and is now a popular and significant place for concerts and gatherings, including visits by recent Popes.

Stretching from here to the centre of Turin is the elegantly arcaded 700 metre long Via Po:

Which then opens onto Piazza Castello, with its imposing Monument to the Duke of Aosta, Emanuel Filiberto, who commanded the Italian army during World War I:

On the other side of this is the Piazza Reale, which precedes the Royal Palace, once home to the House of Savoy, but now the property of the State and a museum:

With this behind me, passing the baroque facade of the Palazzo Madama:

I walk down the chic via Roma with its upmarket shops:

To then have a Punt e Mes at Caffè Torino on Piazza San Carlo (il salotto della città):

Where, later that same evening, a lone violinist fills the square with hauntingly beautiful music.....

I need sustenance, and, after a second aperitivo at Il Caffè dei Guardinfanti, I find myself at the Trattoria Cantine Barbaroux (Nel cuore del centro storico di Torino, Cantine Barbaroux nasce con l’idea di valorizzare la tradizione gastronomica piemontese. Un luogo dove cucina, ambiente e ospitalità si incontrano per offrire un’esperienza autentica,) where I am fed Agnolotti Plin al Sugo d’Arrosto accompanied by a carafe of Nebbiolo.....

Outside the air has an autumnal, northern taste, and the shadows are lengthening.....

Torino is a stylish, attractive city, with arcaded avenues to better Bologna, boutiques to match Milan, and while it doesn't have the ups and downs or antiquities of Rome, nor the bustling allure of Naples, it is a fine city in a magnificent setting, between the rushing river and the snow-capped mountains.

However, I have to move on, so, still in the dark, I rise and walk to get the Frecciarossa 9292 at 07.11 from Porta Susa to Paris-Gare-De-Lyon, past the monument to Vittorio Emanuele and the sign that says, Stop and Kiss....

Then through more arcades where the homeless are beginning to rise (Stop and Kiss):

To the shining, modern Porta Susa station where the police are checking ID (Stop and Kiss?)..... 

And then, quickly, we are flashing past mountain-top castles,

Glimpsing snow caps on the high tops:

And through the border post at Modane then easing down into France, passing the Lac du Bourget near Aix-les-Bains,

Well..... I’ve been to gay Paree

I’ve followed the river and I got to the sea

To arrive punctually 581 kms later in Paris at 13.22.....

In the evening, after walking through a moonlit Paris:

And across the Seine to the Île de la Cité:

I finally get to see inside the restored Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris:

As I have a ticket for Lux Aeterna, a concert of Italian baroque music..... Not necessarily everyone's glass of infusion, but a rather fine way of getting to see (and hear) the cathedral without struggling through the crowds as if rushing to catch the delayed 10.54 to King's Lynn....

While the four voices and organ echo in my head, I think about Paris and previous experiences here. I have climbed the heights of Notre-Dame, the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre, the Montparnasse tower.... I have eaten at Bofinger, Le Train Bleu, Brasserie Lipp and La Coupole, and drunk at Les Deux Magots, Le Procope, et al.... I have been to the main galleries and walked in the splendid parks. I used to enjoy Chartier and her sisters Le Drouot and La Commerce (though these last two have gone and the former is not what it was). I was little more than twenty when I first visited the city, and remember drinking (genuine) absinthe, admiring (and no more than that) the girls who lined the streets of Montmartre their arms outspread to give them each a space, and staying in the cheapest rooms (Rue d'Aboukir rings a bell). And over the years I've come and gone with friends and family, taking nothing but photographs, and leaving no trace.....

Time to leave - to leave my memories behind, to face the present, if not the future.....

My Eurostar rolls away from the Gard du Nord, then is soon flashing through the Corot-Countryside:

Before erasing all sense of past, all feelings of nostalgia, all kinds of thoughts as it plunges deep under La Manche.....

I ain’t looking for nothing in anyone’s eyes

And then reality reasserts itself as a wobbly train chugs out of King's Cross on its way to a late arrival at King's Lynn....

All this travelling has tired me, and I am glad to get back. Having left behind the city that was for many years my home (Rome), I have reached a resting place. They say that home is where the heart is, and maybe that is so, as I nibble at a mushroom:

Listen to the pink-footed geese skeining [Is that a verb?  Ed] overhead:

And sit on Amanda's favourite bench while my tachycardia comes down from 173, I know where I want to be......

It's not that I'll go no more a-roving, nor that my days are completely in the yellow leaf (pace Byron), but sometimes you get to thinking that it's time to rest, time to make the best of the moment.  Looking back there is always more to see than looking forward, but the past just fades eventually as it fills with what was the future.....

I have been lucky, so far. And I still have friends:

I was born here and I’ll die here against my will

I know it looks like I’m moving, but I’m standing still

Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb

I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from

Don’t even hear a murmur of a prayer

It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

Not Dark Yet

Bob Dylan

So here's to the now, the infinitely-expanding present.  The future is illusory.....

The flowers depart when we hate to lose them;

The weeds arrive while we hate to watch them grow.

Dogen

*****

For those I love

*****

Roman Shadows and Reflections

Lux in Tenebris

It's fifty years and more since I went to live in Rome. And, since returning to the UK, I have revisited again and again, drawn by friendships and memories and an inexplicable magnetism.  I lived for seven years in a flat on the second floor of this building:  

169 Via San Francesco a Ripa, (November 2011)

I have just recently been back (for the second time this year) partly to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of The Fiddler's Elbow, the first genuine Irish pub in Italy.

My link with this estimable establishment is very strong, as not only are the current and former owners dear friends of mine, but I also shared ownership of another pub with some of them. This latter enterprise was sadly sabotaged in its prime by that familiar monster, Italian bureaucracy, but still lives on as a rather good pizzeria, Alle Carrette.....

Who are you laughing at?

However, things are not all as we might wish, and two of those friends are no longer in good health, so this visit was tinged with sadness.

Yes, Italian shadows can be long.  Not only that of Carlo Alberto di Savoia, astride his horse in the Giardini del Quirinale, but also those of the traffic on Via Milano as it enters the tunnel under the Quirinale (through which I once raced my Triumph 750 against a friend's Norton Commando.... - the sound was incredible....):

Light is life, and there is often good light in Rome, adding interest to the buildings. Here is one side of the Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere, just by where I lived. On the ground floor to the left of the picture is the Ristorante Sabatini, where Lucio Dalla (who had an apartment nearby) used to eat; on the right of the picture is the Caffè di Marzio, where my flatmate was knifed in the stomach.

Ah, memories......

Yes, I walk round and round Rome, tripping over recollections, bumping into ghosts of the past. Of course it will be so for others, and always has been.  What was Brutus thinking of when he wandered the ancient streets before he killed himself on October 23rd in the year 42 BC?

One thing is certain, Rome then didn't look much like it does today. The Colosseum would not be built for another 120 years:

And Trajan's Forum wasn't started for a further 20 years:

But look at Rome now.....

It's still a building site.....

And it isn't just that old buildings are destroyed, or that new ones are raised. Everything changes, subtly, day by day.  In this Taverna Romana I used to eat occasionally, cared for by the husband and wife who ran it and who treated me kindly.  The sign over the door is the same, but the steel gates and the internal welcome have changed - changed entirely.....

And in Trastevere, where we used to eat at the infamously cheap Mario's (whose little daughter infamously peed on the floor one evening - Mario strewed sawdust across the puddle), and in the narrow street where my motor bike was serviced by a mechanic with imperial tools, tourists now outnumber the locals by a hundred to one:

And this is the Ponte Sisto, across which I walked twice a day on the way to and from work, where I would as often encounter Pope Sixtus the Fifth as any other stranger:

Yes, there are shadows everywhere.....  

But stairways, like this one of Bramante's inside the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, lead both up and down.....

And so I look to make the most of my time. In the grand Palazzo Esposizioni Roma I encounter Richard Avedon, In the American West, 1979-1984, an arresting series of 110 photographic portraits taken over the summers of 1979 - 1984 (during which time I was obliviously enjoying living in Rome).

The book that came out of the project features 12 year old Sandra Bennett from Rocky Ford, Colorado, on the cover:

And, despite her subsequent letter to Avedon, it is the eyes that get me. 

I move on to the Scuderie del Quirinale, where there is an exceptional exhibition (capofila della grande stagione del Cinquecento fiorentino che incarna il passaggio dal pieno Rinascimento alla Maniera) of works by, and related to, Jacopo Carucci or Carrucci, usually known as Jacopo Pontormo or simply Pontormo..... 

And even here it is the eyes that get me......  People stare at me, questioning me, looking past me, looking through me.  What are you staring at? They demand.....  

And I don't know.  Five hundred years ago.  Still looking at me.  

Then in 1925 Giorgio de Chirico portrayed himself, looking at me glassy-eyed.....  

Giorgio de Chirico, Autoritratto, 1925, GNAMC, Roma

Forty years later (or rather, sixty years ago) my art teacher showed pictures by this artist on the epidiascope, explaining some things about steam trains entering tunnels that were then new to me..... (For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 1 Corinthians 13:12)....

Giorgio di Chirico, Mistero e malinconia di una strada, fanciulla con cerchio,
anni Sessanta
(look carefully and you can see two figures with shadows in front of the girl)

Rome trips you up, surprises you, always has something different around the corner.  I drink with a Carmelite, but he tells me that the Barefoot Carmelites are something else.....

Then in The Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna they are staring at me..... Alongside de Chirico, Renato Guttoso (1911 - 1987) painted himself red, staring over my left shoulder:

Vittorio Corcos gave us this beautiful Sogni (Dreams) in 1896:

And Maurizio Cattelan created this Sunday in 2024:

And in 2025 Alfredo Pirri produced this Passi.....

While I join in with Michelangelo Pistoletto's I visitatori (1968) and Un giovanotto (La smorfia) (1962-1975), dwarfed by grimaces and dreams.....

Hey!  It is Rome. What to expect?

Federico Fellini and Anita Ekberg on set for La Dolce Vita, 1960

Angels?

Angel feet?

My feet are tired. I walk over 46,000 steps in two days. I see shadows everywhere....

And I encounter reflections all around me:

I retire to my rooftop bar. A Campari spritz helps blur the edges:

In the streets below police attempt to manage marching protestors; smoke and whistles in the gloom while a helicopter clatters overhead. 

I sip another olive.....

I remember my young neighbours being shot. I remember Aldo Moro. I remember Emanuela Orlandi. I remember seeing Eduardo de Filippo on stage; Vittorio Gassman as Othello still in character after the show;  a party with Gina Lollobrigida on the stairs; interviewing and photographing Aldo Giuffrè in his dressing room.....  

I remember tear gas; saracinesche scrambling down as shops rushed to close avoiding approaching demonstrations. I remember earthquakes; the deaths of popes.  The deaths of friends. The death of hope. The deaths of politicians. 

And now we ourselves face the pulling down of the blinds, the tear gas of the passage of time and we stare into the face of inevitable death, in itself not a problem, but unwanted nonetheless.....

The angel of death stalks the cobbled viuzze of Caput Mondi, and we dream that she is looking for someone else.....

But one by one she picks us off.....

Who is to say who is the next to go?

All we can say is that we have had the good fortune to have had good times and that there is no going back. The world turns, and until the sun goes out there will be light and life.....

In The Fiddler's Elbow, Rome, (as often before, over fifty years)

And there is still time.....

et lux in tenebris lucet, et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt. 

and the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. - John 1:5

Per il mio grande amico Gino