i'm in rome

hi. i'm in rome and it's so beautiful it makes me sad. i think i am sad also because we just dropped jane off to meet her boyfriend at the station and i looked out the window and they were so happy to see each other and i felt a bit alone and then on the way back home whilst the beautiful city glowed orange behind the glass lily the little girl asked me if i had a boyfriend and i said no.

maurizio lily's dad took us on a tour of rome earlier in their big yellow people carrier after a detailed one-and-a-half hour run-through of rome's history whilst we sat at the kitchen table in their small, marble-floored flat trying to keep our eyes open. he got very enthusiastic about the maps and pictures he was showing us; it was sweet. the tour took us in a big circle around rome, and he showed us the axis, the walls, the hills. it was lovely to be shown around by a besotted local.

my favourite new place (a place i have never before visited in rome) was the EUR quarter that mussolini built. the buildings there are replications of classical architecture with the proportions warped to such an extent that they are menacing. in the grey-blue light of dusk they look incredibly eerie, so much so that i would not want to visit them alone at night. i love architecture that can scare you like that, make you feel uncertain of your place in relation to the world.

then they took us out for pizza and miles the little boy questioned me about popular culture, asking me several times to reveal the plot of sweeney todd, which he has been forbidden from seeing until he's 18 (sadly for him, as he is obsessed with johnny depp at the moment). i had a carciofini pizza (artichokes), it was very good but i shouldn't have eaten it all because now i feel like a boa constrictor that has just swallowed a pig and will thus have to roll around for 3 months waiting for it to digest like a big silly snakey balloon.

ah, la bella roma. i didn't realised i missed it until i returned. everything is beautiful. all of the people are beautiful. i want to live here so i can look at all the beautiful things.

oh and also i have forgotten all of my italian. not that i could speak it well before but today i couldn't even ask for a spoon in a cafe.

and blog i am sorry that you have become a bit shit. there are big gaps in you and my writing is not very good. it is because i am tired, i hope. and i said i'd talk about the old man but my sentences are crumbling like ruins so i'll go to bed to sleep or maybe just lie there like a sad snake