I was on vacation in Italy for the last week with some friends; I had a notebook with me and occasionally took the time to scribble down some thoughts or descriptions. I’m compiling them in this post below.

The Vatican

Gardens swept out below like a carpet of green, webbed by cobbled streets in every direction. To the south came the buildings, ordered and looming, fencing in the piazzas in gray and yellow plaster. The plaza itself was like a clock, 8 prongs pointed outwards from a central copper pillar.

Statues of Michaelangelo

Statues contorted in agony, half-released from their marble tombs, limbs and torsos swallowed in heavy slabs. They writhed as if trapped in their blocks, eyes staring out in blank terror. To be completed was their dream; now they stood, half-awake, doomed to exist in deficiency.

David

Larger than life, stoic. Hands heavy and settled, the right arched and resting by the thigh, knuckles bulging and veins stretched across skin. Feet splayed across marble. Eyes distant, locked on with certainty, steady but confident. 

A gaze so ponderous and a gait so free it captured the fame that it always knew it could grasp.

Clear sunlight filtered through the frosted window above. His skin was not white but instead a spectrum, cuts of dark under toned chest muscles and legs, throat and hands caught in brilliant, soft profile of gray. A simple, blank face, too perfect to be memorable. 

Marble was a human canvas. To be able to portray fluidity from solid, unyielding stone was a majestic task–and it was done. Life was drawn out from cold stone. Breath was drawn from light and shadow. Forged in the idea of perfection, David had no weakness, unlike the humans that swarmed beneath. He was immortal.

Central Market

The warehouse is massive. Ventilation pipes large enough to swallow me whole rise up through and around the roof, but the place is anything but cool. It’s not too humid, at least, but hot air blasts through open doors and cracks and licks up sweat from our arms and foreheads. The selection available is impressive: half a dozen butcher shops with red-stained cutting boards and heavy-set scales, knives lined up like matchsticks. Market stalls juggle crates of melons and peaches beside more non-perishable goods, bottles of wine and cans of preserves. Stalls display Instagram-worthy cheese wheels and offer small cubes as samples, only to yell at you to buy when you draw close.

Venice

Murky green water clings to brick and mortar, climbing up the cracks and leaving mold where its fingers reach. The open market stings of fish and bristles with flies. Seagulls fight amongst each other on the docks.

Naples Underground

Down, down we go, walls carved out from hands and time. It’s dark and cold; too dark to write. In the center of the chamber is a single hole piercing down from the surface, last night’s rain having trickled through to form a slick puddle. On the ceiling there is what appears to be green paint, and only when I look closer do I discover it to be moss. The moss crowds around the few lamps that are set up, clinging hungrily to these patches of light. 

Large aquifers hold clear, shimmering water, sourced by streams that spray out from snaking holes through the underground. 

The guide leads us through a narrow passage in the stone, the lamps from behind quickly fading into a muted darkness. The passage tightens; the walls draw inwards and scrape at my back and chest, and my breath presses against the walls and back into my face. I can just see the person in front of me, worming his way through the crack, and noises from behind mean that I have no choice but to keep moving. Junji Ito’s The Enigma of Amigara Fault comes to me. No way but forward, the passage molding around my body with each step, and suddenly I feel a desperate terror held back just barely by my curiosity. No way but forward. Clammy hands grip the cold walls and push me on. The oxygen must be fine down here yet I feel an overwhelming sensation of suffocation, as if breath was drawn out from my lungs with a pump. This must be how I die. 

And then we turn a corner and stumble back into the well-lit corridor, none the worse for wear. The fear dissipates as quickly as it came.