Two days in Rome

Days in Rome were spent in the rain. We rode bikes up the Tiber toward the Colesseum, which had moved slightly since the last trip to Rome in 1990.

Near the Pantheon, umbrellas were procured from a vendor--2 for 5 Euros. 

The Pantheon in Paris is where I first had the idea of how difficult it is to be human. It was very late, I was walking alone in the darkness and came around a corner to the building that was all lit up like an advertisement for liberal humanism and everything good about western civilization. I was struck by the similarity between the cultures, that Rome could be seen as a giant Paris and Paris as a small Rome though Rome's so different from Paris; in Rome I always feel at home and I always feel lost, in Paris I always feel lost.

I'm asked if I'm an introvert or an extrovert? I have to answer in English: people who live in their imagination tend to be introverts, not needing as much from the outside as others.

When the rain stops, both of us are completely wet. It's like a dream: we are both living the life we're meant to live, no one but us is allowed to live it but our life is a only a miracle to you and to me. 

Biking back along the Tiber, every poem ever written shatters right in front of my eyes. It's the lightning Randell Jarrell referred to, and the thunder.

Often we like ourselves more in foreign places, seeing everything as new, hearing sounds like it's the first time we've heard them, as if the birds of Rome are different than the birds of Paris, and those in Paris from San Francisco.