backdrop of their discourse, by refusing to worship at its altar as if it
were a dead thing.
On the third night there was a rainstorm. I stood on Nic’s balcony
and watched streaks of lightning race across the sky, claps of thunder
chasing them. It was like being on Buck’s Peak, to feel such power in
the earth and sky.
The next morning was cloudless. We took a picnic of wine and
pastries to the grounds of the Villa Borghese. The sun was hot, the
pastries ambrosial. I could not remember ever feeling more present.
Someone said something about Hobbes, and without thinking I recited
a line from Mill. It seemed the natural thing, to bring this voice from
the past into a moment so saturated with the past already, even if the
voice was mixed with my own. There was a pause while everyone
checked to see who had spoken, then someone asked which text the
line was from, and the conversation moved forward.
For the rest of the week, I experienced Rome as they did: as a place
of history, but also as a place of life, of food and traffic and conflict and
thunder. The city was no longer a museum; it was as vivid to me as
Buck’s Peak. The Piazza del Popolo. The Baths of Caracalla. Castel
Sant’Angelo. These became as real to my mind as the Princess, the red
railway car, the Shear. The world they represented, of philosophy,
science, literature—an entire civilization—took on a life that was
distinct from the life I had known. At the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte
Antica, I stood before Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes and
did not once think about chickens.
I don’t know what caused the transformation, why suddenly I could
engage with the great thinkers of the past, rather than revere them to
the point of muteness. But there was something about that city, with
its white marble and black asphalt, crusted with history, ablaze in
traffic lights, that showed me I could admire the past without being
silenced by it.
I was still breathing in the fustiness of ancient stone when I arrived
in Cambridge. I rushed up the staircase, anxious to check my email,
knowing there would be a message from Drew. When I opened my
laptop, I saw that Drew had written, but so had someone else: my
sister.
—