I've been to Italy six times. Each time I've said to myself, "Why didn't I come to live my life here instead of Japan?" Japan and Italy both have an esthetic that appeals to me, but it's almost as if they were at opposite ends of the spectrum. What is beautiful in Japan tends to be contained, restricted, individualized. What is beautiful in Italy is expansive and extroverted. Japan is the kinkakuji, the Golden Temple, in Kyoto. Italy is the Colisseum. Japan is the sound of the shakuhachi in the foggy distance, Italy is the chorus from Nabucco. In the end, I love them both. It's not either/or with Japan; it's both/and.
The Latin language never quite took with me. When I went into languages seriously, I wanted them as a way to communicate with living people. I entered the field of linguistics first with an interest in grammar, and used to shop the second-hand stores for grammars of languages which I would then pore over the same way my mother would read True Confessions or follow the lives of movie stars. Once into linguistics seriously, that interest expanded into the other subfields of phonology and morphology - sound systems and how words are formed. If given the gift of building several parallel lives, I would today be a fluent speaker of Russian, French, Spanish and Japanese and my German would be the level of my English instead of the never quite ready for prime time level I am stuck with. Oh, yes, and Italian. By all means Italian, which I consider the linguistic equivalent to watching a kaleidoscope of butterflies at play.
When I was about fourteen, we took a family vacation to Lake Massawippi, in Quebec. Vacation, for my father, meant a chance to go hunting and fishing. In order to have his way he had to promise he'd take us to town to see a movie, and that movie turned out to be Magnificent Obsession, with Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman. Since that time I've internalized the phrase and made it synonymous with happiness. In order to be happy - or maybe "fulfilled" is a more accurate word for what I'm getting at - one should have an obsession of some kind. A life project. Jane Fonda has political activism, concert pianists have the piano, and I once heard somebody (it may have been Itzhak Perlman?) giving a master class tell a budding musician, "Unless you are certain you would die if you could not do music, you should not become a professional musician."
Ever since Covid put us all into lockdown, I've been obsessed (not necessarily in a magnificent way) by YouTube. Music, politics, language and culture lectures. I love Tyler and Todd, the gay couple who have made an off-the-grid life for themselves in rural Nova Scotia, all sorts of bloggers. I love listening to Davide Gemello giving Italian lessons online and the magnificently obsessed Luke Ranieri, the guy trying to convince the world that it's been going downhill ever since we stopped speaking Classical Latin. Don't share their obsessions, most of the time, but love that they have them.
I can get obsessive over wanting to get answers to trivial questions. Like what does the inscription МАGRIPPA-L-F-COSTERTIUM FECIT mean on the facade of the Pantheon? I know that 'fecit' means 'made' but I suddenly realized after all these years I didn't know who Magrippa was and I didn't know what the rest of the label said that was carved into stone about 120 years after the birth of Christ, give or take. Just now, a half century or more since I first took note of this magnificent building, which I've gone back to visit with each visit, I have the answer. It means "M(arcus) Agrippa - i.e., not Mr. Magrippa - filius (son) of Lucius, consul for the third time, made (this)." And for an extra bit of trivia, the inscription is a lie. That building was actually built by Hadrian, the same guy who built the wall to keep the blue-faced Scots from overrunning Yorkshire a few years later. He just kept the facade of the old pantheon, which had burned down.
The Pantheon, incidentally, still functions today as a catholic church, and you can get married here, if you have the right connections, although you will need to reimburse the state for the loss of revenue, I'm guessing, from the six million tourists who shuffle through the world's largest unsupported dome with a hole in the ceiling to let the rain in and splash all over the floor. Just kidding. It has a slanting floor and holes to drain off the rain and it rarely rains in anyway.
For Italy lovers, let me recommend you watch Luke Ranieri's vlog on how Latin became Italian. If the phonology and the morphology make your eyes glaze over, you can always turn the volume off and just enjoy the gorgeous views of Italy.
I'm currently between obsessions. I was obsessive about the Trump phenomenon there for a time, but am now so burned out by this champion of the rebirth of fascism in the United States, that I can't stand the sight of him. I think he's a distraction anyway and the real problem is the lack of demand that liars be exposed and civility be restored, although if he gets reelected in 2024 I will kick myself down several flights of stairs for not working harder to get our clumsy justice system to throw his ass in jail.
But I digress. I was obsessing over the beauty of Italy there for a while. How is it that I constantly get pulled back into obsessing over America's national shame?
Must work on that.
source: photo of the Pantheon: credit goes to John Harper and Getty images
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