Back In Town, We Start the Wind Down

After three days of organizing out of town trips (Tivoli, S. Marinella and Venezia) today was a much- needed rest day.  Laura and I have not killed each other in the last 72 hours as we tried to manage timetables, stops, maps, finding bathrooms at the right time and avoiding heat stroke.  We probably shouldn't push our luck now.  In addition, we've been a little worried about Meredith who has managed to spring impressive bloody noses twice in the last few days, suggesting some rest and hydration might be needed. We were probably right.  We all slept in until 10:30, got ourselves ready for the day, headed for the grocery store and returned to cook breakfast and dye Olivia's hair one more time.  By the time we got ourselves organized, it was nearly 4 p.m., which in American time would be considered a wasted day but by Italian standards is sort of like waiting until a reasonable hour to get moving.  We headed over to Piazza Navona to return the portable wireless, and had gelatto at Sgr. Angelo's place. (He claims that he has the best gelatto in all of Rome, so it must be true.)  We admired the street performers and then decided to head back to our neighborhood, taking another bus which dumped us somewhere near the Piazza Venezia.  We remembered that we had intended to walk down to see a modern art installation near Santa Maria in Campitelli.  Fortunately, S. Maria was also open, so we stuck our heads in for a look around there as well--much to the girls' delight.  Afterwards, we wandered into the exhibition next door. Our expectation was that we were going to see a lot of artist's remembrances of the very tragic Srebrenica massacre in July 1995, in which 8,000 Bosnian men and boys, mostly muslim, were rounded up from a U.N."Safe Area" and murdered.  Another 30,000 women, children and elderly people were forcibly transferred, demonstrating the genocidal intent of the opposition conducting the atrocity.  What we saw, however, wasn't quite what we expected.  The installation was one room--a decommissioned church.  At one end was a polished stick of wood, vaguely reminiscent of a face.  At another was a piece of polished, twisted wood, which looked sort of like a cross, laying on its side on the former altar of the church.  on either side of the installation were gray chairs of varying heights turned in various directions, but mostly away from the "cross."  We did our best to interpret the exhibit to the girls, explaining concepts like genocide and the fact that the various institutions put into place to prevent this sort of thing after the Second World War all failed to prevent Srebrenica.  We talked a little bit about why Europeans are so troubled by this event, and we tried to explain as best we could how the various chairs likely represented the indifference and inaction shown by various nations to this event.  We event concocted a description of how the space between the two piece of wood with chairs on either side represented the path of evil in our midst.  (I have to say, the explanation was worthy of a New York Times review.)  On our way out, we stopped to sign the guest book and exchanged a few words of broken Italian with the very nice hostess minding the exhibition.  Realizing that we could speak at least some Italian, she told us that the artist himself was standing at the entry watching us the entire time. We proceeded to get a reinterpretation of the exhibition from the artist, who spoke no English, of what he intended to convey.  Somehow, between words and sign language, he conveyed and we understood his meaning.  It was a pretty impressive thing.  We more or less had gotten the point right, except that our interpretation of the chairs as nation states was actually meant to represent the indifference of people, the "aisle of evil" turned out to be a pedestrian space for viewing the exhibit and nothing more, and while we had understood that the face at the start of the exhibit was an onlooker, we had missed that it was supposed to be crying and that that its lack of hands was intended as a statement that the segment of humanity which did see this tragedy unfold, lacked the hands to help. By the time we straightened everything out, I'm sure the girls were thoroughly confused, but it was still an extraordinary conversation between two sets of people speaking different languages, and understanding the world through two separate lenses.  Afterwards it was pizza at our favorite place, and a sad farewell to "Nicole", our lovely waitress who has waited on us several times and who has taken upon herself the role of Cecily's personal Italian coach.  She is quite lovely and knows our order and our preferences by heart.  We will miss her warm smile and kindness.  She has been a touchpoint throughout this trip..  We ended the evening with a second round of gelato at Bar di San Calisto, where Cecily once again greeted in Italian her very special friend Sgr. Marcello, and we wandered into the square, where the fire eater was performing.  Meredith begged for a trip to the San Crisogono square as well, to purchase a bracelet from the craftsman we call the "Murano Man", who sold her a keepsake bracelet for 10 euro--but took time to show her the tiny loom on which it was made, telling her that this particularly blue and green glass bracelet took three hours to weave.  Tomorrow, last day in Rome. What will it bring?