"Simply Letting Yourself Live is Beautiful in Italy"

The history of Rome, according to British Journalist H.V. Morton, is both “exhilarating and oppressive for the traveler.” What ways have you found Rome exhilarating and oppressive?

    In a way, I have found Rome to be oppressive in some ways that directly contradict all the ways that I had found Rome to be exhilarating in my previous entry.  Rome, as my new home, heightened my senses through the beauty of the language that I want so badly to speak, and the village atmosphere of Castel Gandolfo charmed me.  I felt as if I were walking in a dream, and a dizzy one at that.  Things that I had been told about Italy I found to be true for myself.  I immediately wanted to immerse myself in this country.

    However, this week I have found Rome to be somewhat oppressive.  It's as if last week was indeed the dream, and this week I've woken up.  And I'm 4,000 miles from home.  I am divided, because the Italy that had so befriended me last week has now betrayed me.  Just as I am attaching to this new home, I am reminded of the first.  What about my mom, and my friends back home?  Where can I find a place here, and how can I bring them with me?

   Natalia Ginzburg explains that, after living in a new city as an adult for some time, one feels indifference or anger towards it, but these feelings are not necessarily all bad.  She says that these feelings are, "no different from the feelings inspired by people, when a prolonged and daily habit of living together has streaked our love with intolerance and anger" (Cahill 270).  She goes on to say that this anger does not replace the love we once had for that person; merely it has "grown over the love like lichen" (Cahill 270).  She says that these negative feelings, combined with initial love, make for a stronger relationship with these people.  Similarly, I believe my fairytale love for Italy couldn't have lasted.  I must love it even though I see it's faults. The main fault for me is communication.  I long, more than I predicted, to hear often the voices of the people that ground me in who I am.   

    Luigi Barzini asserts that everybody in Italy seems to be doing his or her duty with wholeheartedness (Barzini 70).  With enthusiasm, everyone performs their tasks of the day, whether it be working, performing, or the like.  Barzini notes that this satsifaction with their lot in life yields the hypothesis that "everybody, no matter how humble, degrading, or insignificant his position, has, after all, a dignity all his own" (Barzini 70).  This dignity refers to the person with a clear conscience who is not jealous of others.  If you have found comfort in your position in life, you are clearly grounded.  Just as the Italians assume their positions in life with dignity and equinamity, so I must find a specific place for myself in this new home, Italy. 

  Somewhere between the history of mankind, as exemplified by symbols such as the broken Constantine statue and the Colosseum, and the history of my family, which is deep in me, I have to find the present of myself.  Unlike Ovid, I am not on a passeggiata towards exile, but away from it (Cahill 44).

   In Chapter 3, Barzini notes that there are a myriad of reasons that people come to Italy.  However, many of those reasons, such as religion, living richly, beautiful art, fine food, and la dolce vita could be found in other countries as well.  Italy has a distinct quality that can be summed up as the beauty of "letting yourself live" (Barzini 55).  Past the oppressive confines of my ties to home, and into the world that is not always dreamlike, but always I love, I must simply live.