So after five weeks in Rome, I’m back and blogging again.

I feel ridiculous, honestly. I wanted to blog WEEKLY while there. But, as it turns out, completing a novel, traveling around the world and filming a documentary had burnt me out. I have been back in Washington for three weeks and I am just *now* beginning to get back into the swing of things. 

I did write while in Rome, but it was nothing that I wanted to show anyone. Selfish as that may seem, I felt like I’d get a better glimpse of the city if I ignored any potential “reader” and wrote Rome down as it hit me and only me. The things I wrote while there were sketches of the city, random prose and bits of poetry that hit me in key locations. I knew that I needed to give myself the grace to be burnt out after the last year, especially after the last few, hectic months of finishing the book. While my best intentions were to blog about Rome while IN the city itself, my vivid memory and my notebook will have to be fuel enough for the following posts. This first one is just about the wonderful problem of being in Rome to begin with.

Being in Rome was tough. The city is gilded and graffittied, filled with travertine and tour buses.  It takes a great deal of determination to move past the circus of Rome and find something unique. Souvenir stands and street grifters stand in front of all the famous monuments, screaming for your attention. And if they aren’t enough to put you out, the advertisements that sometimes drape over a monument will. Don’t get me wrong, Rome is beautiful. But it can’t be really known if you’re a tourbus tourist: there for a weekend whirl through the five most famous sites. Believe me though, it is worth fighting to get to know.

As difficult a city as Rome usually is, for Vasant and I, this difficulty was increased tenfold. Our flat was not the most comfortable place in Rome. I was still editing my novel (which is finally completed after seven years of effort), we were getting our documentary script ready and scouting filming locations with not a single day to waste. Hardships cropped up amongst the busy schedule: my dog (of 15 years) died back in Seattle, we got sick (twice) and my ankle, which I’d sprained earlier that year, along with my Achille’s tendon, gave out on me again. Our shower in our apartment was broken, giving us only mist instead of an actual jet of water. Our bed was nothing more than metal rods with a blanket over it. By the end of our second week, we were exhausted, feverish, burnt out and grieving for our dog. We felt like we didn’t know anything more about Rome than what a postcard could tell us. We were upset that creating art within the city seemed so out of reach. 

One Saturday, around midnight, we left our apartment in frustration and walked to the Colosseum, 4 km away, ranting about these very things. When we arrived, we sat on the grass in the moonlight and looked at the archways, talking about our trip. Eventually we stopped talking and just stared. The Colosseum at night has a way of quieting you. It shuts you up. Its endurance in the face of commercialism, traffic, pollution and obviously, the harsh march of time, made us feel small. Our problems felt invisible. 

Then, out of the silence, we both were reminded of Goethe’s trip to the Colosseum centuries ago. Vasant pulled his copy of Italian Journeys from his bag (he carried it with him everywhere while in Rome) and turned to that page. 

I loved the way the Colosseum was lit the first time I saw it. The amber glow in the archways reminded me of Goethe’s discovery of it at night, lit up with fires from the vagrants who lived within its arches. He watched it, musing on its endurance within the city, after having been exhausted by a Roman festival.  

That night a challenge was thrown down before us as we read Goethe on the grass beneath the towering structure. Goethe wrote, (though he was actually quoting someone else’s Roman travelogue which were inspiring him) “I believe that Rome is the school for the whole world and I, too, have been purged and tested here”. We realized that we could either sit and complain about the city, the schedule and various hardships, or be artists and use those things to find art. Art, not in spite of the distractions and disturbances, but in the distractions and disturbances themselves. So that’s what we did. And I really feel like, following Goethe’s words, the city and what we personally faced while living there, did test and purge us as artists.

We created a ten minute documentary while there- a teaser, if you will. We filmed enough for a full-length documentary to be edited over the next year, as work allows. I continued to edit my book while Vasant wrote extensively about the process of creating art when it demands to be hunted for. We were sweaty and sore, covered in dust and determination, as we trudged up hills and ran down twisting medieval alleys. 

A few posts will probably follow this about my favorite sights in Rome and the process of creating the documentary (which for perfectionist purposes, won’t be posted online until we have more time to work on it after we graduate this December).  For now, I think it’s best that my first post back be about the most important aspect of my trip:

Art is hard to find and harder to create. Rome is a city full of art and yet, it will fight you off as much as it will beckon you. Being in it and trying to create art there was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had in years and I can see now why, for centuries, artists go and sit among the ruins and come home with great things growing in their hearts.