Running for Your Life: Roman Mood

Back from a best time of your life family vacation in Rome. We’re talking walking, eating pasta and drinking wine and amaro. Below is a taste of what we found:

Imperial Past I

This place Roma is one in which

People resist the other

While kissing her on both cheeks

And then a third time

To seal the illusion.

Imperial Past II

When you are so long gone

From being the Imperial

What to do but cling to

Your exception, no maps will

Mark the spot, find the center,

Your desire on terms of the ancient conquerors,

A mind game that isn’t tied to rules

You can possibly understand

And that, best of all, are so

Pre-digital as to make even the squarest

Disciple bow in disbelief.

Imperial Past III

We’re on board Alitalia, the nine-hour flight home. The plane so tight there is no extra room, a knee-crusher, and me with my deep vein thrombosis concerns. It’s been more than fourteen years since I’ve popped a blood clot, but the fear of spitting off a new one never leaves.

K is sitting across the aisle, trying to read “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed, but when she presses her “light” button on the handrest nothing is illuminated. In her row at least. A light in Row 34, directly in front of hers, does go on. She then turns to the fellow passenger behind her in Row 36 and kindly asks him to touch the lightbulb graphic on his handrest. He does so and Kate blinks out of darkness and into her “Wild” reading.

M and I notice later that in each of the four-seat middle rows to the bulkhead, the light switches work – but for the row directly in front, not overhead.

M presses her flight attendant button and when our assigned person comes by in due time, M tells her about the malfunction. People have also complained about hardly working entertainment systems. Mine is out for four of the nine hours, except for the channel that offers the slow narrative of the tiny white plane and Western world graphic whose 1980s Atari-style technology offers nostalgic comfort.

The flight attendant tests a few of the lights to see if what M says is true, and sure enough, it is.

“I’ve never seen that before,” she says with a Mona Lisa smile. Then she shakes her head and goes back to wherever it was she came from.

Next: Running for Your Life: Hubris Handicap