Sounds of Time, Assignment #16

[note: original had two narratives matched side-by-side]

Cloister of Basilica SS Quattro Coronati
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The sound of the streets fades into the air. A nun leads us into a small square courtyard; we enter the doors with curiosity in silence. A paved hallway encircles the courtyard, we all circle along its shaded path, gazing into the sunny serenity that lies within.
My view is barred behind petit columns joined by soft arches, and I feel both inside the scene shuttered outside, admiring through an open window. We circumambulate the full perimeter before we dare tread into the sun and the open air.

Small, narrow breaks in the banister allow entrance from all four sides. We begin to peak our feet past the columns; the crunch of gravel beneath my feet is enough to break the silence. We all tread lightly so as the keep the peace, slowing our pace and keeping on our toes. Finally, we rest to write. We adorn the courtyard along the banister, sitting every four arches away from one another. Soon we are comfortable, poised like relaxed statues, blending into the scenery – I can picture us in white marble.

Patches of sea-green grass cover each corner, so as to open a relief of gravel shaped in a diamond in the center. The grass spills over the edges of each patch, a natural length we are unaccustomed to see in the finely-trimmed flat lawns of Seattle. In one corner, a peak of red colors the mood. A few open-leafed bushes add height to the green landscape. Despite the quietude, sitting here, I can tell that life lives beneath. Small ants carry brambles across the gravel. This place is youth without crazy – so much potential is tucked away beneath its soil.

When our pictures are satisfied, there is only the constant trickling of the central round stone fountain that dribbles into a shallow, cross-shaped basin. Each trickle is so light that it looks like a string of pearls running down. The sound of water beads breaking the surface of the pooling water brings life to the silence, music to the insects that work beneath our feet, and inspiration to our pens. We sit, soaking in the moment.

The sound of cars, chatter, and vendors are absorbed by the heavy stone walls. I can smell the tranquility. Even the sun seems to have softened her touch on my skin. I lean back and let my gaze wander upward. The arches point to a second level of cubic columns – larger and further spaced than those lining the bottom. Red clay pots overflow with bushy leaves speckled with pink and red petals. If there is life inside, I do not hear it, but I imagine the nuns mouthing their daily prayers. These support an inward-inclining roof that narrows our view of the outside to a square postcard of a rich azure sky and a white, glowing sun. A single pigeon coos as it flutters back and forth across my view.

We are on a hill, but we are engulfed in a heavenly basin. We are underwater; the outside world seems distorted and distant. The cloister has sucked us in from its open roof into this courtyard. The courtyard is small, but seems to be endless in its expanse, as if, if I were to move into the scene, I would find myself in the middle of Eden, without visible boundaries.

I shift out of my sunbathed seat to a ledge in the shade. The coolness seeps into me and a different tranquility, more sharp but clear, trickles past my previous blanket of warmth. Others relocate as well; I watch Jay tread carefully: bending around each broken piece of rock, hopping over a blade of grass.

This calm is so foreign to us that we inspect every inch of foliage and stone as if we have never seen its beauty. The simplicity of life has become only a memory, and as we stare in its face we are cautious. This seclusion is so distant from our daily routines that we try hard to treasure and preserve it, careful not to taint it with our hands, and consequently remaining distanced, without experiencing it (much like my own feelings toward religion). But life in a different setting we would have trampled over without a second thought. I remember the scattered fountains – the tourist sites pristine, the forgotten ones floating in soda cans and old newspapers.

A group of tourists chatting pulls me out of this trance of silence, and a distant roar of plane engines soars above. The ambiance recedes before me, back into the hazel gaze of the fountain’s water. It will wait for me until I am undistracted to guide me back, but for now, she rests. We have been slowed by her detour into simplicity, but we will soon head back into the busy streets of Rome. I can already hear the gradual stirring of my classmates as they too awake from their trance. The treads of gravel steps grow more frequent. The slide of clothes and paper grow louder. The lure of the city is calling us. We pack away this treasure into photos and writing who knows when we will visit this memory again. But we certainly will not live it. A gentle breeze kisses us goodbye – we will soon meet the true winds outside. Shawn’s voice leads us: “Let’s go.”


Cloister of Santa Maria della Pace
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It echoes with voices – no word can be distinguished but I can hear the people dancing around me: a 60-year old Italian woman, a young Brit with glasses, a newly-wed looking to explore, a French mother-daughter pair dressed in Parisian couture. Rigid square columns in a square courtyard – four per edge, one per corner – are linked by plain semicircles. I step directly across the central square courtyard to the opposite corner for a seat; the voices pass directly up the stairs, and ricochet from the walls.

A small ledge lifts above the courtyard about half a foot, barely enough to distinguish the height difference. As I sit I notice the simplicity of the space. Four strips of white marble tie the corners into the center of the courtyard – like an ‘X’ – which slightly sinks into the ground, as if for drainage purposed, like the tiled floor of my bathroom. A cement button peaks out from the center, a nipple in a flat courtyard. The cobblestones that pave the ground are angled to the edges, diamonds to the square.

Only three colors exist here – grey, white, beige – which I almost mistake for one mass of off-white. All surfaces are flat. This droning monotony scatters my vision, so that in one gaze forward I can see the entire sphere of the cloister, glancing from column to column to column. The light color forces a focus on everything, so that I cannot concentrate on anything. I am so distracted that I close my eyes, only to imagine more tourists walking by, tagged by their accents. Here, life is visiting a dead cloister, without a soul of its own.

I take a few pictures – looking back they capture greater beauty than I remember (the courtyard is indeed more pleasant in photographic silence). As I force myself to take in the scene, I notice that the walls behind the columns are decorated in crumbled frescoes – only one remains intact, the rest, now grey cement. A depiction of a procession before a pope sits above a small staircase; I am not tempted to explore.

My eye moves upward. The next level has alternating square and round columns – square openings – stoic, boring, amplifying the distractions, a foil to the echoes of modern life around us. On this level is a circle of heads, sipping coffee, reading tour books, and biting into cornettos – finally faces to the voice of ghosts. Above them are shuttered apartments, inside which I imagine an Italian housewife is currently preparing dinner and taking in the morning’s laundry; her cat watches her. Finally my eyes climb to the dull blue sky boxed by the cornice of the shingled roof – a single sweep of paint, now faded from time. A single pigeon flaps across the apartment ledge, a familiar sound from the streets of Rome.

We are street level, and while the people are far away, I feel amongst the crowds. Even the sound of construction penetrates these walls, resonating from behind my right ear. The central space is much larger than the small courtyard of SS Quattro, but I feel the walls closing in – my eyes jump across the empty courtyard immediately to the walls. I falsely believe I can touch the columns.

I sit in the shade, neither warm nor cold. I become antsy, my legs twitching, and I get up to walk around the square. I motor across to the small nubbin in the center – it has four openings that drain to a pool of black, dirty water beneath the paved ground. I can imagine water flushing piled garbage away.

The ordinariness is too familiar to me; I cannot revel in its purpose. Metals doors stand behind me, and behind them, the sound of saws. Bleached yellow semicircles form on the walls from the sun peaking through the arches. (The bottom of Hank’s shows has a map of the world carved in them!) I am too distracted – no focus. I cannot feel religion – only see it through secular eyes.

A sign in front is directing me: Uscita, exit.