3/28/24

Yesterday was my first day in Italy.
I arrived around 9:30am after a 17 hour, sometimes hair raising series of flights from Los Angeles.
It was raining hard when I arrived and the first photo in this post is the first photo I took in my native country.
My hotel is a 2 minute walk to the Coliseum, so after the rain, I ventured out.
The area around the Coliseum is packed with people taking selfies.
In fact, while the building itself is quite impressive for its size and age, it was the people from all over the world that garnered most of my interest.
It seemed no one was interested in photographing the building itself.
For perhaps everyone there it was the proof of life, the self portrait that was most important.
And to be honest, my own efforts to take a photo of the ruin yielded nothing of interest.
In a welling up of pride and sadness, I teared up more than once while I walked the streets of Rome.
I am of Italian descent, this is the history of my culture, but the erasure of assimilation that accompanied the diaspora that brought my family to America makes it hard for me to feel the throughline that brings me here.