Who is the hero or adventures in Italy

 

I.

On a deserted road in the middle of Rome, I struggle with the strange disorientation that comes when memory collides with reality. 

You think you know a place from all the photos, all the stories, all the movies—then you’re actually there, standing next to a random rental car in a random parking lot, looking up at some ancient complex that’s somehow both exactly what you expected and completely foreign. 

A bath, a place of worship, and who knows what else—what remains isn’t always labeled neatly.

A few steps further, the greens of a large field partially protected by a fence make me hurry.

Circus Maximus had seen faster feet in its day, often four at a time—hooves pounding patterns into dust that has long since blown away. Most moved forward until they had to move backward. Only one would get to remain forward at the end of the race, and even they’re forgotten now, like most things in history.

The sound of my footsteps keep me grounded to the present—that weird space between Monday night and Tuesday morning where time feels as incomplete as these ruins and most people are doing the sensible thing by being in bed. 

These are the moments I’ll never experience again. What I mean is that I will never experience this moment like this ever again—at this time, in this moment, in this state of being. 

It’s taking in the city for the first time, looking around with everything new. 

These are the moments that give you the confidence to go for anything, take on any opportunity, dive in, live it.

It’s amazing. It’s special. 

You can’t take that for granted, you know. But we do.

Are our current technologies as impermanent as those preceding them? I’m sure some people in Ancient Rome believed their documents, monuments, art, technology, and culture would persist.

Others weren’t so foolish to presume.

Pockmarked holes cover the Colosseum like freckles, noting where precious metals were siphoned out. 

The birds descend the Spanish Steps as the sun rises.

The Trevi Fountain flows backward with the weight of human bodies on it.

The Parthenon provides a portal to ground and sky. 

The Sistine Chapel maintains its subtle sparkle beyond the slick-inclined people sneaking photos to show once and never look at again.

I can’t help but think about the images once stored in minds long gone, disappeared into organic matter where physical bodies and nature became one.

Among the normal decay, a reverent beauty maintains.

How much is lost on purpose? 

How much of it, no matter what we do, cannot go away?

II.

“Who the hell decided on this white on green patterning with red roofs?” 

The screech producing this question hits me as I escape the spawning bodies around the Piazza del Duomo. 

Sometimes your brain fixates on the weirdest details when you’re trying to find breathing room in a city choking on the external witness of its own beauty.

You go to the church—a line. You go underground—a line. You go to the dome—well, you don’t actually go to the dome because you get the wrong tickets, allegedly. You go to the Campanile instead—a line. 

At the top of the tower that Giotto developed, you learn the motivations of creation in the most human way possible. The unfortunate man was not much of a looker, so his energy went into building what wouldn’t be denied due to its prominence. Who says hardship isn’t motivating?

Through all this, you walk. Oh, you walk. It’s the best way to get the feel of the city and all its senses. Firenze—the city that was once the jewel of the area. The Medici playground converted into a Renaissance theme park, with every corner assaulted by international hordes on the daily.

The penetration continues into the Uffizi where budding influencers perform their ritual dance—trying to get that perfect shot with pieces they saw others pose before, while the collective temperature boils in the waiting queues. Like watching a performative echo, each person mimicking someone else’s reverence without quite feeling it themselves.

While I don’t grow sick of the art, this game of social preening gives me a headache. You can only watch so many people treating masterpieces like backdrops in a personal comedy before your brain starts to revolt.

And so, I deviate.

III. 

My perpetually cheerful American digital guide—you know who—alerts me about a painting in this sea of cynicism. 

It isn’t a hopeful painting, and it doesn’t hide that fact. It’s the kind of painting that makes you wonder if hope itself had gone on vacation and left despair to house-sit.

As someone who can appreciate why things go wrong, I want to pry further. We all secretly love a good trainwreck, don’t we?

Within this sleuthing I learn of Savonarola—the Renaissance archetype for the hater. Think of him as the original one-star reviewer, but instead of complaining about slow service, he’s ready to burn down the whole restaurant and ensure restaurants like it have no room to grow, all while promising great riches and glory on the ground you stand.

At the historical hater’s ball, we have the favorites: Judas, Cain, and for my non-biblically inclined, Joseph McCarthy, Hitler, Karen, and the local neighborhood peddler of disdain. Each one perfecting their own brand of “everything was better before and will be better if we are like before.”

IV.

The waves of tourists never subside in the Palazzo Vecchio. There’s no high or low tide here, just an eternal flood of humanity washing over the cobblestones. 

There’s no originating point, just a blur of people, slingshot balls in mid-air, sounds from musicians mid-song, and a strange man mid-yelling into the wind.

The strange man wears a black cloak threatening to engulf him, like a shadow taking attendance. He rails against the ills of our time—smartphones, social media, our deviation from morality. The same old song, just with updated lyrics. 

The two girls from Uffizi jostle uncomfortably for the right shot in front of the marble statues, moving through the man as he screams. Yet, he maintains his form. 

His words soon take over my ears. 

V.

The marble towers over the cloaked man, this supposed vessel of divine will. 

At this size, perhaps it should humble him—or maybe that’s just what it wants, standing there with its ideal proportions and unwavering gaze.

“Look at this gaudy representation of man,” the cloaked man says. 

“Who does Michelangelo think he is?”

“Who do you think you are, David?”

“Your eyes follow me across the gallery, boy, like you know something about me.”

“I could crack you open right now. Find the flaws hiding in that pristine surface.”

“That’s what we do, isn’t it? Pick at perfection until it crumbles, expose the rot beneath the renaissance.”

“I could square up with you at this moment, crack you open, revealing all of the imperfections inside you.”

“Just you wait, you self-righteous boy.”

“Even the purest of creations carry the seeds of their ruin and I’ll find yours.”

“Oh, you don’t look so sure from the side. You must have heard me.”

“You will repent. I will win.”

VI.

The tightly positioned stone of the court warms under my feet as something shifts in the air. Clouds gather as if to give their say. The various points of focus throughout the square start to converge on a scene that paints itself into existence before my eyes.

A man sits on an ornate chair in the square, his ears lengthening with each whisper from the two women bent close to him. They pull and stretch his ears, making more room for their suggestions, their assumptions, their carefully crafted doubts. The man has the eager lean one has in hearing controversy, the willing suspension of questioning.

From the left, another woman approaches, her grace made more dangerous by beauty and conviction. One hand clutches a torch that casts shadows, the other drags a young man by his hair, while he reaches toward heaven. He is innocent, but the allure of the poisonous story, the slander, proves too much to fight on his own. 

Behind her, they work quickly—adjusting her appearance, enhancing her impact, making the lie look beautiful enough to believe. 

People step forward, offering their jewelry, their books, their art to flames that feel more real with each passing moment. Not even those annoying slingshot balls are safe. Each sacrifice feeds something hungry in the air. 

The Palazzo Vecchio transforms into a theatre of willing destruction. 

VII.

The realization hits like a hangover where your own dreams turn prosecutor. The cloaked man becomes the most visible man in Palazzo Vecchio, a fixture on a cross. 

The crowd that once hung on his words now hangs back, their faces a blur of doubt and disappointment.

“I thought the people loved me. I was protected by something bigger. I know I am. I think I am. Wait, do I?”

“The flames ran too far, too fast. Everything became too much. I needed to stop time.”

“Don’t they understand? I had the shadows pinned down. Everything cannot be allowed to spiral. We must have order.”

But what the cloaked man thinks is a pin becomes a hand reaching back. Moving foot to foot, up his trunk, shoulder to shoulder. The struggle becomes a dance, and the shadow leads all along—smoke rising to his nostrils, the fire not trailing far away, making a home in his head until his whole body joins the rising dark. 

Sometimes the thing you’re fighting wears your face in different clothes.

VIII.

The swing creaks under my weight like time itself complaining. Late morning sun collaborates with the Tuscan wind while Vasari’s words on Botticelli blur with my early afternoon Chianti.

What I see meshes with what I’ve read, memory and history playing their eternal game of telephone. 

Botticelli knew this dance—the seduction of certainty, the comfort of burning away complexity. He may have given some of his paintings to the bonfire of the vanities, traded visions of Venus for those of simplistic purity, then found his way back to beauty. 

Some stories refuse to burn.

These days we don’t need torches or physical grip of the beautiful venom—a meme, a carefully crafted post, a targeted video does the same work.

The truth is that we all delight in the whisperings of what could be. 

Those who ride the waves of insinuations play a dangerous game of being engulfed by them. 

It’s a tale as old as time memorial, but people still follow this path. So it must be important, or not as simple as we think, or both, or none of the above. 

This path may not actually exist. It may be what we tell ourselves that the path was to flatten the complexities of reality. This is the beauty of reflection. You start at one place and end up at another, like getting lost in winding and expanding streets and somehow finding exactly where you needed to be.

I like to think seeing brings knowing, but that’s not quite it. Order shifts like sand under our feet. Slightly at first, then faster, until the ground itself seems to move.

We have too many things to think about today. Every choice branches into a thousand possibilities. 

Are we all just drowning in options while gasping for the certainty that destruction promises?

Is there anything that survives the fire, even those who light it? 

Maybe that’s why we keep taking photos, telling stories, painting pictures—not to remember, but to prove something was real, even if just for a moment, before the smoke clears and certainty slips away again.

__________

For more:

• Botticelli, S. (c. 1494-1495). The Calumny of Apelles [Tempera on panel]. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.
• Lucian of Samosata. (170 CE). Slander, a warning
• Machiavelli, N. (1532). The prince