Smell.
Rome is beautiful, Rome is a historian earthquake, Rome is a space out of time and reality. Rome is mesmerizing, but tonight, Rome is only one thing: Rome stinks. To be true, it is not only tonight, but tonight, it strangleholds my breath, my nose and my stomach. Tonight, added to my sore feet, my sweating back and my physically unbearable fatigue, Rome’s smell is untenable and disgusting.
Of course, at noon, streets exhale a delicious smell of pizza. Of course, some pieces of the historical district are usually preserved from pee and trash hints, but too often a walk in Rome sweats improvised urinals’ rancid steams, empathized by Roman summer’s unbreathable heat. All this raised to an apotheosis of sickening flavors when you enter the subway. I guess Paris breathes the same smell but it is been a while since I have been there and I have forgotten.
And tonight, this never ending wait by a container full of hot plastic’s and decomposing trash’s bouquet, challenges my patience and my nose, it makes me as nauseous as when I first met Rome a couple of days ago. The night was as dark and hot, and I hoped off the airport shuttle nearby Termini Station. Stations are always the theater of a life none wants to belong to after midnight; yet, I had to cope for a few minutes. Soon caught up by my first dirty sent, lost in a foreign and hot city by night, I doubted for a minute of my destination. I wanted to be everywhere except here.
This is insane the power of a smell you can’t catch, you cant’ tell, and that viciously turns the tiniest paradise into hell. Because tonight, like the night I arrived, any Dolce Vita is suddenly annihilated. I cant’ remember the beauty of the day, I am possessed by the streets’ bitter breath.
Justine T.Annezo –August, 22nd 2020, Somewhere in Rome – GMT+2
Fleeting Wor(l)ds 