A Walk with White Phantoms Along Well Trod Routes

I went to a restaurant on my own one of the days I was in Rome, I’d spent the entire day alone because the person I was visiting had to go to uni that day, so it was a fitting way to end the day. I didn’t really plan it, I was in my hotel resting after walking for miles and miles back and forth across the city and I began to get hungry. When I left my hotel I was still undecided. My main plan was to go to the big train station nearby, and just find a McDonald’s or some other fast food place. On my left as I closed the front door behind me however, I spotted the restaurant that is situated right next to the hotel, and on a whim I just decided to go for it.

I’ve been reading Fernando Pessoa’s the Book of Disquiet (Richard Zenith translation) lately, and early on there’s a passage where Bernardo Soares – the fictional “heteronym” whose perspective the book is written from – talks about eating at a restaurant after work every night alone. He talks about how he sees another man also doing the same evening after evening, and how they eventually develop a slight kinship or mutual respect for one another despite never really having more than one brief conversation. I saw the restaurant, and thought that if this man who I already feel a similar kinship as those two did for can comfortably eat alone, then so should I be able to.

Whenever people like myself express slight fear or concern about doing things alone; worrying that people will stare, think we’re pathetic or pitiful, and so on; we are told – gaslighted – that we’re worrying over nothing, that no one cares. It’s a lie, of course it’s a lie, in the 21st century more so than ever it’s a lie. It didn’t help that I was seated right in the centre of the room, I was thinking I’d find a nice table near the corner, but wherever I was I know I would have received the same judging stares. The same looks of first curiosity, then suspicion, and finally contempt. It was a lot less unpleasant when it was happening than it has been in my mind all the times I’ve considered the idea of doing stuff alone over the years, but don’t for a second let any normalfag tell you that it doesn’t happen at all. You will be judged.

I feel I’m giving the wrong impression though, the place was nice and the food was good. I had some gnocchi with a pesto sauce that had some soft cheese stirred in with it, giving it a kind of stretchy/ stringy consistency. I don’t know if it was a particularly “authentic” dish, I was told the day after that gnocchi is something you usually have with a more meaty sauce, that it’s a little strange to have it with pesto. I liked it though, it tasted pretty good. I had a desert as well, a big chocolate truffle thing with some ice cream. It was a pleasant experience for the most part, though there was a slight unease the entire time. I’m glad I went, I’ve always had this fear of doing things alone and the whole day felt like me overcoming that to some extent, this restaurant visit was where those feelings of being a loser or that everyone is either laughing at or embarrassed for me were most intense.

I started the morning in a very similar way, after leaving my hotel around 10 o’clock I decided to walk in a direction I hadn’t yet gone starting at my hotel entrance until I found somewhere to get breakfast. After about 20 minutes I found a place, a small but busy café that was down some stairs in an alley just off to the right of a main road. I had looped back around on myself at this point I think, there were very few major roads in central Rome unlike the city I live in, instead most of the day was spent walking through smaller side streets and alleys like where this café I had breakfast at was located. Like shown in the header image, left is actually a photo taken from the front door of my hotel – so if you’re able to find where I took that photo, and you turn around, you’ll be able to visit the restaurant I was just talking about – and the right one is just an unnamed alleyway I thought looked pretty.

The café was really nice, I went in and tried to order in Italian but the woman behind the counter could tell I was struggling and so spoke to me in English, and pretty good English as well. She was really helpful, trying to explain various different coffee types, giving her suggestion for the best pastry to have with it, taking me to my table. Part of me felt a little patronised, that I was being treated like a child, but that is the effect I tend to have on people. Forever doted on, it’s preferable to being treated with disdain of course but being held as a perpetual child isn’t ideal. Everyone always thinks I need help, that they need to take care of me, I don’t know how to change that. She took me to a nice seat by the window, where I stayed for a while deciding what to do with the day.

I had this big map given to me by the hotel, which had all the major city landmarks made clear, and so seeing roughly where I was on the map at that café, I decided I would walk in the general direction of the Castel Sant’Angelo (formerly Hadrian’s Mausoleum) and cross the river there, then walk along the river for a while before crossing back later that afternoon or early evening after finding somewhere to get a late lunch. I went to the counter and paid, and headed back out onto the street. I believe instead of going back up onto the busier main road, I took a right and followed along the smaller walkway where the café was.

I remember I walked for what seemed like a really long time; down more alleyways and through side roads, past various churches and other interesting and beautiful buildings, down a long series of very narrow cobbled streets lined with various clothing and jewellery shops, through a big open marketplace filled with families and old women wandering between stalls, then down through an area with quite a few restaurants, finally ending up on a long stretch of road mostly lined with apartment buildings; looping back on myself multiple times over but trying to stick to the same general direction. After said empty stretch of street I walked out into what I thought was going to be another of the many Piazzas that dot the city, and instead was greeted with pic related.

It was a lot more impressive in person, the pillars at the front are thicker than old oak trees. Walking through them to see the inside, I was transported back to imperial Rome for a brief moment. The inside by the way was an equally spectacular sight, though I’m afraid I didn’t get any photos, the ancient poured concrete dome (a technology that was lost for over a thousand years) with it’s perfect circle in the centre to let the light in is really something to behold. The rich patterned marble that covered the whole floor, the perfect squares lining the interior of the dome, the sculptures in their little alcoves. All the major churches and cathedrals and places of worship in Rome have a very similar style, but it never loses it’s majesty even after you see it time and time again.

I’m glad I saw it, because I hadn’t planned to that day and wasn’t sure if I’d have time to fit it in on any of the days following, turning that corner and stumbling across it like that was quite pleasant. So after going inside, I came back out and thought I should look for a certain sandwich shop which an anon from a thread on /trv/ I saw a month before the trip said I could find very near to the Pantheon that was really good. I couldn’t find it though, I did a lap of the entire building and then came back around to façade at the front without seeing it. So I continued on in the direction I had been going, towards the river. Along the way I passed by a small art gallery, and decided to take a photo of one of the pieces I saw on display that I liked. Can you ever guess why?

So after another half hour or so of wandering I finally found myself walking up along a street with the building I had originally been heading towards right in front of me. The famous bridge in front with the statues lining the railings that is in many of the photos of the Castel Sant’Angelo was right ahead, on the other side of a road I had to cross. It was both a fair bit smaller than I expected, and much busier. I didn’t take a photo myself because there were so many people crowding around the front of the bridge, and as soon as I began to cross I was met by another one of the African scammers who seem to plague the city. Luckily a family were also trying to cross and they walked inbetween us before he could get to me and try to fasten one of those stupid bracelets on my wrist again, and so I moved on ahead.

The castle, or fort, or I guess just museum now, was also smaller than I expected. It’s going to sound silly, but I assumed it would be much larger. The Pantheon I had found larger than expected, but with this place I had the opposite experience. I remember climbing all over it a decade ago, or longer actually, in Assassin’s Creed 2 (a videogame) and it seeming huge. Almost as tall as the Colosseum. Yet in reality it was quite a bit smaller. I thought about going inside, but I decided it wasn’t worth paying as I’d probably get bored rather quickly on my own in there. I stood looking at it for a while from the bridge, and then not sure what to do next I just decided to take a left and follow the river. After a few minutes I came to another road, crossed over, and in front of me was this view.

St Peter’s Basilica, at the end of another short road. I thought perhaps I should go in a different direction, as the plan for Friday was to go to the Vatican with the people I was visiting, but to turn away without at least seeing the place that was right ahead of me was too difficult. To keep finding these world famous landmarks – and world famous for good reason, they really are something to behold – without even really trying but instead just by wandering around, it really does begin to feel like you’re wandering around one big open air museum. That’s what one of my co-workers said, he’s from Italy and when I mentioned I was going to Rome that’s how he described it. The historical centre anyway, the area within what remains of the Aurelian walls, which I saw a portion of on a different day near the Pyramid of Cestius.

The city I live in has it’s share of monuments and old churches, the cathedral of course, old fashioned houses, and even a couple of cobbled streets preserved; but it is nothing like this. It has been thoroughly modernised, almost every single street has tarmac, and a lot of the older buildings have been demolished to make space for more modern (or post-modern I suppose) structures of glass and steel. You couldn’t have a day like the one I’m trying to share now, where you feel like if only for the modern dress of the people surrounding you, you could be walking around the city as it existed two or three hundred years ago. Before industry, cars and buses, the reinvention of concrete.

I saw a lot of motor scooters to be fair, very handy for zipping around the narrow streets, but almost no cars that entire day. Of course I did see some, there are still major roads which run through the city like veins and arteries. There’s this one major road built during the fascist regime which is particularly hard to miss, the bronze statue of Augustus I mentioned in a previous post is on the side of this road. It is very possible however, to navigate the city with minimal contact with such roads. At one point I went almost an hour without seeing a moving car, just the occasional one parked somewhere, between the café and finding the Pantheon. At least I don’t remember seeing any, but I do have a tendency to beautify a memory so maybe the city isn’t as free of vehicles as I’m remembering.

Walking up to the main square I saw another scammer, this one was already occupied. Working his magic on another tourist, I hung back to observe the routine. I almost thought that maybe I should say something, the tourist was an older gentleman and I didn’t like the thought that he may be scammed out of quite a bit of money. I took a photo of the two of them to show my friend, this whole racket these people are running is funny to me, and then continued to watch the exact same steps play out as they had when I was getting home on Tuesday evening. The older man was smarter than I gave him credit for though, and after a moment he just walked off with the bracelet, without paying anything. The scammer couldn’t do much, there were crowds of people all around.

He looked over to me, ah another victim he thought, but I quickly stood up and headed into the square proper ignoring his calls. In the centre is this big Egyptian obelisk, surrounded by a ring of stone bollards, which are taller than they look in the picture. These obelisks are all over the city, in the various Piazzas you can find while walking around. I think they’re all really cool, the legacy of Rome’s past as a great conquering power. I know that many of them are not actually originals, but some are and when you see one you can’t help but imagine the legions hauling them back from some pillaged city in Egypt or North Africa after a siege.

I climbed up on one of the bollards, and sat there for a good while. It’s from there that I took the picture above this paragraph. I watched the people around me for a while, and just enjoyed being surrounded by it all. The square – more of a circle, but you know what I mean – is ringed almost by these two long exterior hallways lined with columns that spread out from the church towards you like arms trying to pull you in to an embrace. On both sides just in front of these, are two fountains, pic below. After some time taking the view in, I headed over to the one on the left.

As I was trying to get a good photo of the fountain, not sure if I succeeded or not, a man walked by and somehow I caught his attention. He was fairly old, maybe in his late 60s or early 70s, and from England like me. At least that’s what he said, from Bournemouth specifically, though he seemed to me to have a slight German accent. He asked where I was from, and I said where and asked him the same. We chatted for a while, he told me he visits Rome often now that he’s retired. Being a catholic and having friends there to stay with apparently. His daughter-in-law is or was quite ill, he told me, and so he had decided to come here to say a prayer for her.

He asked me why I was visiting, was I studying or what plans I had in life, the usual kinds of questions people my age receive from older more kindly strangers. I told him I was visiting a friend, but had taken the day to enjoy the city alone, and that I was still trying to decide what I want to do. At one point a homeless gypsy woman came past and held up a box of coins, croaking something unintelligible. I gave her a few cents, and so did Bournemouth, and she wandered off muttering something to herself. We chatted for a while longer, and then he told me he was going to go ahead into the Vatican proper to find a toilet and say his prayer.

I wandered around for a little while longer, and unsure what to do with myself. I took some more photos, none of them were very good, and just enjoyed the sun. It must have been about midday at this point, and the sun was beating down. Notice in all of the photos how blue the sky is, I haven’t seen it like that once since getting home. It’ll be summer before I see that again, a sky completely clear of clouds. So warm as well, not uncomfortably hot but just right. I could comfortably walk around without even needing to wear my jumper, I didn’t even have my jacket with me that day but left it behind in my hotel room. I was thinking about what to do, when I saw Bournemouth again walking back.

He spotted me as well, and came back over to chat some more. He said he couldn’t find a toilet, and was thinking of getting some lunch if I wanted to come along. So I said yes, and he said he knew a nice little sandwich shop. If you want to find it, with your back to St Peter’s head leftward instead of going straight down the road I originally walked up to get there. Then on that path take a left again somewhere onto a reasonably wide (for Rome) street lined mostly with clothing shops and small places to eat. The place we went to was very tiny indeed, the area behind the counter was larger than the seating area. Essentially just a small wall table with stalls along to sit at. Inside there were only two men in suits chatting to one another, both speaking Italian though one had a clear British accent, and the place still felt full.

I had a coffee (unusual for me) and a panini with rocket, mozzarella and a few big slices of tomato. We continued the conversation about my plans for the future, the man told me about his children and how they had gone travelling around when they were younger and that helped them decide what they wanted to do. One had gone on to become a dentist, I can’t recall what he said the other went on to do. I expressed some doubt about the likelihood of me having a similar experience, but I never quite forgot the exchange and it has stayed on my mind since. I will perhaps talk about this in another post, we’ll see.

I told him what I said here two entries ago, about how finding someone from England was so comforting, like finding an oasis in the desert. I also said that I could never imagine just hanging out and having lunch with a total stranger back home, yet out here I felt an immediate kinship with him. He said he understood exactly what I meant, and if he were my age he would likely understand far more so, being old and familiar with the city and language after many visits unlike myself. Bournemouth also told me that he was actually born in Norway, but had moved to England while still young, which explained the slight accent.

The man who ran the shop and served us was also really friendly, joining in to chat a few times. When it came time to leave I left him a couple euros extra as a tip, and headed out with Bournemouth. When we got out we decided to head our separate ways, he gave me a hug and wished me the best of luck with everything, and I said the same. The whole encounter reminds me of something I read from an interview with Hidetaka Miyazaki (the mind behind Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne) talking about the PvP system in those games. For anyone who hasn’t played them, essentially when you want to play online with someone you enter the world of someone else as either an opponent or an aid. The encounter is random, you can’t really communicate through voice chat but only through the in-game gestures and your actions.

He said he got the idea from an experience one evening when his car broke down in traffic. A man in another car got out to help him, waited with him keeping him company until someone could come to fix his car, and then left without ever giving a name or anything. An entirely benevolent encounter, with someone he would never meet again. In another life, in another circumstance it’s very possible he could have had a completely negative but equally contained encounter with that man, as he has had with other people in life. This was very much like that for me, I met this really charming man who reminded me of home, we shared stories and a meal together, and now we will never see one another again.

Speaking of that the desire for familiarity – and charming men, though in my story of course there’s no such connotation for you to find – I found myself listening to a lot of music over the holiday that I haven’t listened to for a long while. Kasabian, a band which I strongly associate with a certain very happy time of my life, and The Smiths. Now The Smiths I actually associate with a rather unpleasant period of time, but I found great comfort in the band’s music (as well as some of Morrissey’s solo work) during that period and I listened to it so much back then that the band’s whole sound is very familiar to me.

As well as this, both bands also have a distinctly English sound I think, despite sounding entirely different from one another, and during this trip I found myself really searching for that in whatever small way I could find it. A recognisable accent, a cup of tea with milk at a café when I could get it, and yes in the music I listened to. Most days of course I was with company so I didn’t listen to a lot of music over the holiday, but on Thursday whenever I was wandering from place to place I was playing something. So those two bands really provided the soundtrack to this day I’m describing here.

So after the lunch I began walking in the general direction of the river again, and came to it just in front of the Castel Sant’Angelo. That is, if you are facing it from the bridge I would be just on the left. Back where I started, and so this time I followed the river in the other direction. Yet another scammer came up to me, and I don’t know why (perhaps I was in a good mood because of the lunch) I decided to humour him. I had no intention of paying him a single cent, but it was funny how religiously they all stuck to the same routine. He asked me if I was English, I can only guess that they always ask this first because they speak English better than other languages common among tourists, because I do not look particularly British or English myself. I have curly brown hair, and brown eyes, in fact I don’t think I looked too foreign in Rome. Though I was generally a little lighter skinned and taller than most locals.

He followed the pattern as they all do, pulled out a bracelet and was going to tie it around my wrist but I grabbed it before he could asking if I could just look at it first. He was somewhat taken aback I think, like this messed with the routine and his programming, so I examined it for a second and handed it back to him. He insisted it was a gift, and then grabbed my other hand as if to shake goodbye but a little aggressively and looked me dead in the eyes before repeating again “is a gift brother”. “Ok” I said, and turned to walk away, he followed along with the same line as always, “a donation my man, my family very poor, you have any euro?”. “I don’t have any euros” I said, as matter of fact as I could deliver it, and I walked off, keeping hold of the bracelet. Another one for my collection.

I followed the river for some time, past a couple of nice looking cafés and lots of very dry looking trees without leaves, until I came to another bridge which took me back across to the main side. I say the main side, the side that my hotel and most of the major landmarks are on. There was a whole area of the city on the far side that I wanted to visit at some point, called Trastevere, which I heard from an anon on /trv/ is filled with loads of fantastic looking old medieval buildings as well as lots of great places to eat and drink, but we never ended up actually going there. There’s always next time, maybe if I go back I’ll find a hotel there instead as I was recommended to stay either there or where I did. Back on the original side of the river I started from, I took a quick photo of the Tiber.

This might be getting boring to read, maybe I’m sounding like I’m repeating myself, but after this I walked some more. Shocking surprise I know. I walked for quite a while, again just listening to music and enjoying the old avenues and small streets. The city is so much more colourful than any British or at the very least any English city, there’s a town I visited in Wales called Tenby a few years ago with my dad which was very colourful, but not like this. With the same soundtrack I’ve already mentioned, I kept walking without really knowing where I was going for probably another half an hour or longer until I came out into a much wider open space with this huge set of old brown stone stairs ahead of me.

To the left was the famous white marble monument to the unnamed soldier used in the header image for my first post about this trip, I had come full circle. I almost thought about returning to my hotel, a short walk away, but I found myself drawn to that huge staircase like a moth to a flame. I say this so often, probably because I’m not great at taking photos, but the picture here really doesn’t show how grand and palatial this staircase was in person. It really felt like something out of an old and very different time, ancient, part of a city designed for people who moved and lived and operated entirely differently than modern man. A huge set of stairs – the image doesn’t show it as I’ve said, but from the top you can see quite a lot of the city – a path to bring man closer to the old gods of the city.

There’s a church at the top of course, so going up the stairs now you only head towards the one god. I’m sure that once this was a pagan temple or something like that, at least the site at the top (I found out a little later these stairs were built into the side of the Capitoline hill) must have been. I should look it up, I’m sure it’s an incredibly famous named church and I seem like a brainlet hypothesising when I could just read the Wikipedia article. The church was of course incredibly ornate and filled with delicate symbolism and decoration everywhere you looked. Every detail, every square inch of the interior deliberate, layered with meaning. I took a few photos, here’s one of them.

After that I came back outside and sat at the top of the stairs to rest my legs. I had walked for hours at this point. The sun was beating down, though it was past midday and beginning to lower. If I had to guess, I’d say it was maybe getting on for three in the afternoon at this point. I wasn’t the only one sitting on the stairs, several people all the way along from the top where I was right down to the bottom few steps. People reading, groups chatting, one woman just seemed to be lying there with her head resting on the step above sunbathing. It was one of my favourite spots in the whole city, maybe my very favourite. I was thinking I would have to go back to my hotel after this, I wasn’t sure where else I could go but I was not in the mood to go on another long walk to another distant area of the city. So I stayed there, trying to make the moment last as long as possible.

I decided after a while to go back up to the platform in front of the church before leaving, and standing there I noticed that down and to the left was a open and also raised area with a bronze statue of a man on a horse. Pleased that I had found something else to spend time doing, I went down the stairs and up into that courtyard. Getting closer I realised it was the Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius – or more accurately, a replica, the real one being held in a museum also on the hill that I didn’t feel like paying to visit – which was how I realised that this was the Capitoline Hill.

If it’s not clear already, my knowledge of the geography of the city is pretty bad. I got around though, after admiring the statue and taking the photo above, I headed past the statue to the right and through the pathway down the other side. Which took me to an overlook of the Forums that we had walked around the first full day of my visit, but from an angle I hadn’t yet seen them. I tried to take some photos, but there were loads of Chinese tourists crowding around near the railings with selfie sticks and similar devices which made it pretty hard to get a good one. This is the best of them, the only one I’ve held onto. On the right you’ll notice the raised platform and gardens from the other post I wrote about this trip, and where I also took some photos from.

So I walked down a rocky path, which led me to a carpark that I followed, forcing me back on myself a little, in the direction of all the old ruins. There’s no access unless you have a ticket though, and I’d already been inside anyway, so I followed along and around the road which went along the gates in a curve until I eventually I found myself back on a normal street. This was after maybe ten minutes or slightly longer. I then walked along this road for a while, thinking that eventually it would surely curve again to the left and bring me back to the Colosseum from I could easily find my way back to the hotel. So on I went, and after a short while I noticed a small narrow park to my right. I crossed the road, and found a place to sit on one the stone wall surrounding it.

It was a strange park I thought, stretching quite some distance to my left and right, but with not much of a width. If I walked maybe the length of two swimming pools I’d reach the other side, though it wasn’t a straight path to get there. There seemed to be two gravel paths along each side’s wall, which both slope down symmetrically into a grassy central area. It just seemed like a weird design to me, but the weather was nice and I was glad to have found a nice park so I decided to stay a while. Even though it was quite unlike any park I know here at home, because I have been spending a lot of time in parks recently I found that same feeling of familiarity there.

So I carried on in the general direction I had been going, but through the park, and as I reached the end I saw there was some ruins. I sign told me that this park existed was once the Circus Maximus, the iconic chariot racing stadium of ancient Rome. If you’ve ever seen Ben Hur (the one from 1959 with Charlton Heston) you’ll know it well. It was quite an interesting moment when I found out, I really began to see that everywhere I walked in this city I was touching history. Again I had stumbled upon another major landmark without even intending it as well, though this was to be the last that day. After this I headed back up to the left and in the direction of the Colosseum.

This time, even though I had seen it from multiple angles and at different times of the day, I yet again found myself seeing it in a way I hadn’t before. There was a small hill on my right as I walked towards it, the Arch of Constantine being straight ahead of me. Up on the hill were of course many tourists all taking photos, but not so much that it was completely crowded and so I decided to take another photo as well. I headed up there, and ended up having another, this time much more brief, encounter with a stranger. I was standing up on this rock trying to get a good photo (pic below), when a small middle aged Chinese woman came up to me and tried to get my attention.

“Hey, you tall. Take photo me?”. It wasn’t the first time I had been asked to take a photo this trip, and it happens from time to time near where I live because the stadium brings in tourists, so I understood what she meant and agreed. I dropped down, and watched as she tried to climb up onto the rock to pose for a picture. I took the photos, she jumped back down and offered to take a photo for me, but I said it was ok, and then she thanked me with a slight bow in that typical East-Asian way and disappeared somewhere. I also got down from the hill, walked around the Colosseum until I got to the same side as my hotel, and decided to take one last photos from a small footbridge before heading back there.

As you can see, the sun was a little lower in the sky and it was not long before it would begin to set. I headed back, past the statue of Augustus to say hi, to where I had my first encounter with a scammer two nights previous and had got very lost. This time, I knew exactly how to get back from there. It’s a really enjoyable feeling, when you start to get to know a city and figure out how to navigate it. Sure it was only a ten minute walk, but I think now that if I were to return to the city I could find my way around much more easily. I’ve made a lot of videogame analogies in this post for someone who almost never plays them anymore, but here’s one more. Like in any open world game, after enough hours of exploration you just get a feel for the map.

Funnily enough, it’s doesn’t work too differently in real life. Not only do you learn about the specific area you’re staying in pretty quickly, that isn’t surprising, but from that you begin to understand how the city is structured more generally and how to get around it. You start to understand, in a way that you can’t explicitly articulate, the pattern behind where things are. It’s a really satisfying feeling, it does make you feel more confident, that initial feeling of being completely out of my depth that I had the first couple of nights really dissipated after Thursday. For several reasons, one of them being this understanding of the city, of the very buildings and roads, that I started feel after that day. Of course it still felt very foreign to me, I’d need to live there for some time to truly understand it in the same way I understand my own city, but on Thursday I realised that I could.

Life, we meet again

I suppose the only way to start this is by returning to where it ended. Which itself is something about which I’m not entirely certain. I still have many miles to cover, the alps poke through the clouds below me, but we have to make a choice somewhere. So let us say it ended when I opened this notebook (a gift) to finally start writing about this trip, on an airplane that intends to land just south of Paris a day later than I should be flying home. My plans after that are still somewhat uncertain, there is a train across the English channel at nine in the evening but that gives me several hours to navigate my way north and through the city to the station from which it departs. A city which I’ve been to once before, for a few hours as a child.

Though of course some part of me was quite glad I would get to see her one last time, as saying goodbye yesterday was a little rushed and rather sad, there was something quite unpleasant about having that moment invalidated. Painful as it was at the time, forcing myself to eat a whole pizza which I hadn’t had time to finish in the restaurant as fast as possible so I wouldn’t have a moment free to think or cry, as the train took me out of Rome to the airport, the moment had a certain melancholy beauty to it. In fact thinking about it now, it was very much like the scene from Cowboy Bebop where Ed leaves the crew, and Spike and Jet are eating eggs. I knew that a second farewell could never have the same importance.

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I was too tired to keep writing earlier, I spent the second half of the flight simply struggling to stay awake. Not much time for sightseeing, though the long night-time cab ride through Paris in the rain was very pretty. Notre Dame half ruined, cranes poking out through the broken rock. Warm yellow streetlights reflected in the deep navy blue of the Seine. Frogs in their fancy frocks on beautiful bridges, wide old streets, and everywhere else I looked. Aesthetically, Paris is somewhere inbetween Rome and London – it has the cobbled stone streets, the wide city squares, and the old apartment buildings which sometimes date as far back as the late middle ages, like the former; but the stone is heavier, the colours darker, which I found comfortingly familiar after a week away from home. The ride through the city was almost representative of a transition back from the new world I’ve been living in for the last week to the one I’ve always known.

This minor ordeal has overshadowed the whole trip, the many thoughts and feelings I held so tightly a day ago now scattered to the wind. Of course I can read some significance into recent events, in a certain way things ending like this does feel appropriate, I always feel like this though. I look for meaning in everything, yet never really find it. Relating to this, one of the things I was most upset about yesterday after finding out about being stranded in Italy was the fact that the first ending which I had also found to be very significant ended up meaning nothing. But more than this there is also something else, all the title ideas I have buzzing around in my mind revolve around this unexpected adventure.

Breakfast in Rome, Lunch in Paris, Dinner in London. A Tale of Three Cities (It was the best of times, it was the worst of times). The French Connection. Planes, Trains and Automobiles. They’re all pretty bad – one is literally just a famous movie title, not even a pun on one – but that’s always how it is. While I’m writing a new entry I’ll have many, sometimes dozens, of potential titles pop into my head. I tend to just go with the one that is least cringy, maybe I don’t always choose correctly but I think I do a good job most of the time. My point with sharing these ones is to make clear the thing which is dominating my thoughts. I have a whole long week’s worth of feels, and insights, and moments in time to talk about, but I feel them slipping away. I’m losing sight of it all.

I think I just need some time to reflect, a day or two to regather my thoughts, and certainly a good night’s sleep. Ah, we just came out of the tunnel. I’m in England, I’m home.

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Ok, it’s Thursday now. My first free day since getting back, as we are once again understaffed where I work. I have had some time to collect my thoughts again, and so I’ll try and get them out in this entry. It would be impossible to cover everything though, there’s probably even things I’ve forgotten about that at the time felt rather noteworthy. I tried to write while visiting this new city, but my mind was so awake and buzzing at all times that even when I had a quiet moment I found it impossible to maintain focus. That’s probably what will be a major theme running through this post actually, the bipolarity of emotion and circumstance that held from the day I arrived until the moment I got home. Even the journey home, it was one of the most stressful experiences of my life and yet it was an adventure which I will likely look back on somewhat fondly in years to come.

There’s a lot I intend to write, in fact there may even be six or seven separate posts planned. Not all relating to the trip, but several which may. One I already started work on before leaving actually, something much more experimental for this blog. It was something I was trying out to occupy my time while waiting around the week before I left, inspired by the style of my previous upload. It kind of ties in with a meme that started on /his/ around that time though, and so by the time I actually get back around to finishing it it’ll be horribly out of date. I also intend to change what I’m doing with this blog in a few ways, for various reasons which I will also write a separate post about probably. As well as talking about my general feelings, there was a specific day (exactly a week ago in fact, Thursday) which was quite an important one and I think might make for an interesting post.

There’s more, but I’m less sure about the validity of my other ideas at this point so I’ll leave them as a surprise. I want to talk about this holiday, it was a big deal. Possibly one of the most important weeks of my life, depending on what happens going forward, and certainly one of the happiest in years. It wasn’t all happy, in fact there were a fair few moments that were rather sad and while my time there was lovely for the most part there was this slight sadness that was ever-present. Very dim most of the time, but with the occasional flare up. The main reason I left in the first place was to get away from all my problems back home, and in one sense I did. I didn’t think about any of them once the entire time. Instead I found new things to be upset about, or old things maybe. These things were just as much help in distracting me from all the problems I left back home as the nice parts of the holiday, which I must stress did outnumber the negatives by a lot.

It was always going to be this way, as the saying goes “Wherever you go, there you are”, and I am someone who is prone to melancholy. No matter the situation, I will find something to lament. In the case of last week, it was a few things. I found myself feeling quite isolated on a few occasions, particularly during the first half of the visit before that Thursday where I was forced to get by entirely on my own the whole day. There was this moment when I was in the airport right after landing, and I asked a worker of some kind (a janitor/ cleaner I think) for directions and he didn’t understand a word I was saying. It was jarring, I had asked without even thinking. Of course I was aware that they speak a different language in Italy, I’m not a fool – although plenty of people in the city spoke some English – but I hadn’t actually thought about what it would be like in such an environment until I was there.

I very quickly realised that I would not be able to communicate with a lot of the people around me. I had to get the girl I was visiting, or her boyfriend, to order for me when we would go anywhere to eat. Well I didn’t have to, but it made things far easier, and that feeling of dependence was rather unpleasant. It made me feel small, like a child that had to be taken care of. There was a certain helplessness about me, but I’m glad for it because overcoming that was quite satisfying. I certainly didn’t feel so helpless any more after managing to get myself home the way I did, or on Thursday evening for that matter. It was an unpleasant experience though, and I found myself craving any small moments of familiarity I could find from the very first night I arrived. Any time I heard a native English speaker while walking around I felt an immediate sense of relief, safety even.

I remember the first full day I had there, the Tuesday, we went to see the Colosseum and all the ruins of the forums, temples and monuments right in the heart of the city and we came across a guided tour being given by an English guide. We weren’t part of the tour, and we’d been walking around for hours already and had seen almost everything in the area to be seen (pics below are photos of the area I took from this lookout point on a hill), but I just felt this need to stay and listen to him. I couldn’t pull myself away easily, even though we had been on our way out to go and get something to eat. I didn’t stay that long, the tour was coming to an end as we stumbled into it anyway, I was just surprised by my response. I realised that I had been ever so slightly on edge since landing in the country, and for a very brief moment I was no longer on guard

This photo doesn’t really do it justice by the way, from up there where those photos were taken you could see so much. There were also these gardens behind us also up on the hill, apparently intended to recreate what the imperial gardens would have looked like in ancient times, which I wish we had spent more in just relaxing. If I go back, I think I would like to return there for an afternoon. I do intend to return, despite how things ended, and some other things I’ll get into later. Not only because there is still much more to see, I think I saw most of the major touristy things and landmarks but I didn’t get to explore much of the city outside of the historical centre, but more because I know I have friends there. Or maybe just one, it was difficult to know what her boyfriend thought of me. At some points he seemed to want to chat and was very friendly, at others he seemed uninterested or even kind of pissed off that he was forced to be there.

He was clearly very suspicious about my intentions, insisting on being there at all times. He didn’t allow her to have a single day alone with me, which was a shame though I can understand given that there was something between us once. Or maybe there wasn’t, some part of me is unsure. Which is what was frustrating, I never had a chance to really ask quite a lot of questions that I wanted to put to her while there like that. I had all these questions, not specific ones but more general things I’ve wondered about for years, that I didn’t feel comfortable asking because there was this scrutinising presence there constantly. While it was not one of the main reasons for the visit I was still expecting to finally understand a lot about the way things went in the past and the truth of things, and even information that would help me in my own life after getting home, by the end of the trip.

I didn’t though, because so much of what I wanted to talk about could easily be misinterpreted as an attempt to hit on her or rekindle something – something that I’m not even sure ever existed – by either her boyfriend or her. I had to avoid the subject of how we first started talking, what was actually happening either of the first two times we used to talk, and whatever there was or wasn’t between us half a decade ago, entirely. I feel like not a soul will believe me, but I really did not have any intentions towards her. I’m really not interested, even though she is much prettier in person, but I was many years ago and I just wanted to find out what was happening back then exactly. There’s still a lot that is kind of hazy, a lot that I don’t know about.

It was just difficult to have a conversation, because I always had to be careful and I couldn’t talk about anything, like I’m used to with her. Yet at the same time, it was so much easier to talk about what we could talk about in person. I could never go back to the way things were, I want to hang out again (though after what I’m saying here, she might not want to anymore) and keep in touch from time to time, but I can’t do the long drawn out text conversations after finally getting to have a normal one. Returning would be easy, and if I planned a few months ahead rather than leaving it so last minute it would be very cheap to return. I would like to see her here though, it was fun being shown around a new city and there’s still a lot of it to explore, but it would be cool to be the one showing someone around next time.

It was very weird seeing her at first, after over half a decade of her being text on a screen essentially. Yes I’ve known what she looks like since 2014, but there’s always been this degree of separation. To me, until this trip, when I thought of her I thought of words on a screen. I was so nervous at the airport, my hands were shaking, and I missed them both at first because I was only expecting her. I noticed immediately when we did spot one another that she was as nervous as I was, if not more, which immediately put me at ease. By the time we got on to the train out of the airport, and had introduced ourselves, my initial anxiety had almost completely dissipated. We went to a place near the big central station in the city, a short walk from my hotel, Termini. We got these big deep fried balls of rice, mozzarella and meat, Arancini they’re called.

After this they took me to my hotel, and we agreed to meet back at the station the next morning. It was when her boyfriend said “see you tomorrow”, that I realised he would be there with us for the entirety of my visit. Which I was a bit annoyed about in that moment, because she had said several times when planning for the trip that she herself wanted time alone to chat and hang out, and then didn’t tell me that she changed her mind. I wasn’t so bothered by him being there, though not having a single day was a shame, just that I wasn’t ever really told about the change. By the end of the trip I wasn’t even thinking about it anymore, when she told me he insisted on coming along with her the morning after my flight was delayed to help me plan out how to get home from Paris, I was surprised she even felt it worth mentioning.

Of course he was, whenever one of them is there so is the other, like conjoined twins. That’s how normal it was after a couple days, I kind of forgot that before I arrived I was ever even expecting to spend time with her only. Her tone in the message implied she did find it annoying though. “He insists on coming even though it’s only for a few hours” I think she said, or something like that. Which did make me realise, actually it is a little odd that he insists on being there. If even after a whole week, he’s still convinced I’m secretly only there to steal his girlfriend, then he won’t ever not think that. It’s just a shame, that there was this subtle implication hovering over us all the entire holiday that made things slightly tense.

Now some points during the week were probably more fun or went more easily thanks to him being there. He knew the city very well, which made getting around easily, as well as finding good places to eat and drink. It was also a lot of fun going drinking as a group of three, in a way that maybe going with just her wouldn’t have been. It felt like what it must feel to have a group of friends as an adult, something I’ve never had. I have two friends, and the three of us very occasionally go out together, but going out multiple times a week and joking and chatting is something I’ve never had. We went out three times during my stay at night, the first full evening they left me to go home fairly early and I stupidly decided to try and walk home despite having no experience of the city yet.

That led to a little adventure of it’s own, we said goodbye near the Colosseum which is where the day had started and they went to the station while I walked back to the bronze statue of Augustus which I had seen earlier that day and wanted to look at again. It was built during the Fascist regime, but a replica of a stone sculpture that dates back to ancient times. Augustus is one of the most impressive figures in human history, and I found the statue pretty cool, so I wanted another look. It was sunset, and a street band were playing a cover of Californication by the Red Hot Chili Peppers as I stood there staring up at the larger than life representation of this larger than life individual.

I carried on back the way we’d gone that morning, heading around past Trajan’s column intending to go up some stairs and onto the road back to my hotel, but standing at the bottom of the steps was an African man with many bracelets. He spotted me, and somehow could tell I was from England. “London? London!” he called out at me. I told him which city I’m from, he replied that he had a brother there. “I love England, such a good country, no racist there, no racist”. “Hm, don’t be so sure” I muttered with a slight smile. “Me, I’m from Sierra Leone. You come to Africa one day yes?”. He put his arm next to mine, “see, you white, me black, but same”. He took one of the bracelets off and put it around my wrist faster than I could pull it away. “Oh no, I really can’t” I said, trying to remove it, but he had tied it on quite well.

“It’s fine, it’s for you no charge because you England. No racist”. I said ok, and began to leave but before I went he asked for me to wait, he had his phone out. “I like you England, let me get photo for my family in Senegal” he laughed quite heartily, and putting his arm around my shoulder he took a selfie of us both. I smiled for the camera. I have to be honest, his English was not great but it was better than nothing at all which most people around me seemed to have, and I was actually quite enjoying the interaction. Then his voice became a little more serious, and he told me that he was very poor and he had kids to feed. “A donation brother, some euros for my children?”. I wasn’t about to go into my bag and pull out my notes, but I had a couple of coins in my pocket and offered them to him. He told me to keep them though, “only if you want brother, that is useless, ten euro only if you want”.

I didn’t want, and so began to head up the stairs. “It’s alright brother, you going to Termini? Is down that way” he pointed down a side street which went led in a very different direction from where the stairs I had been heading did. I didn’t know where I was meant to go though, so I waved goodbye and went down the street, and after about 30 seconds I spotted him following me in a car window. I got a bit worried, thinking he might try to bash me over the head with a rock or something, and so I turned around. He stopped dead in his tracks, and slowly his rather serious expression became a grin. “Ha ha haa, brother! Just a few euros for my family ok, very poor”. I took one of the euro coins out of my pocket, placed it on a stone bench and said that was all I had. Then I walked as fast as I fucking could out onto the main street at the other end of the alley from where we entered.

I then spent about two hours getting very lost, surrounded by people speaking a language that was total gibberish to me. Beautiful gibberish, but gibberish nonetheless, I didn’t know where each word ended or started when trying to listen in on people’s conversations. Luckily, I found two businessmen smoking cigars outside a restaurant – a sight that was much more common than back home, the only man I’ve known who smoked cigars was my granddad – who spoke pretty good English and managed to direct me back to the station, from where I easily found my way back to the hotel. It was a very unpleasant evening, probably the worst though the first night wasn’t too much fun either. I had a pretty similar experience that first night actually, after getting through the rather (and I don’t use this word lightly) kafkaesque experience of actually getting inside my hotel room.

See when we first got to my hotel entrance on Monday night, instead of a reception we found a plaque near the door telling us to go to a different building just around the corner. We went there, and found a reception to a different hotel, with a very strange looking man behind the counter. He looked like a man from a nightmare I had many years ago, when I was younger than ten. In the dream I was with two friends, two brother I haven’t seen in years, and this man lived in a huge gypsy tent on a hill. The man, tanned skin with a large smile and a big bald head (the guy behind the reception had his hair, but still bore a striking likeness to the dream man), invited us to come in, but only one at a time. After some time, the second friend was invited in, and I remember this creeping fear begin to build. Then, lastly I was allowed in also, but when I entered neither of my friends were anywhere to be found. I woke up after this if I remember correctly.

Anyway, it’s a silly dream but I saw him and was instantly reminded of it. He explained that there were three keys, one for the door onto the street, one for the entrance onto the floor owned by the “hotel”, and one to my room. We went back to the original building, “see you tomorrow”, I headed inside. The front area was pretty big, but empty. Just a wide open room, with no decoration at all. No plants, no chairs or tables, nothing on the walls, just a big room with a cold marble floor. I headed up the steps and found the specific hallway that was “my hotel”, from what I understand the different floors of this building are owned separately. So some floors just had normal apartments, but my floor was a hotel. I walked along to my door, you could hear people in their rooms but again not a word of English. I went to try my door, but I couldn’t get it open.

I spent maybe ten minutes trying the key both ways as hard as I could, even trying the other keys, to no avail. Eventually I just gave up, I carried my suitcase and backpack back downstairs and around the corner to the other hotel with the reception desk and the nightmare man. I told him about the key, and he insisted that it must work because they had used it earlier that day to clean the room. All he would say was that I should try “more strong”, and so I went back. I climbed the steps, got to the door to my floor, and tried the key. Of course, now this one wasn’t working, even though I’d had no trouble at all earlier. I did get it open after a while, but in doing so I cut my thumb just below the knuckle and it bled for a good half hour. I got to my room, tried the key again, and somehow it worked without any difficulty. After relaxing for an hour I went back out, thinking a night walk would be nice.

It wasn’t though, it was quite unpleasant, I tried to listen to music but I couldn’t do it for some reason. There was just nothing I felt like listening to, it all felt wrong. So I listened to the people around me, they were my music. Which is a bit like something David Foster Wallace said in an interview I watched later that night (or perhaps on Tuesday night) on my phone during a visit to Italy. Lately I’ve been watching other interviews and speeches of his, I’m not sure why but I find them quite comforting, and this one was no exception. He quite articulately expressed almost the very same feelings I was having, about losing independence, about the shame you feel when you can’t talk to someone in their own language when you’re a visitor to their country. Again, by the end of the holiday I was far less bothered by this, but those first couple days were difficult.

Of course, I also had much more time alone those first two days. In fact on Wednesday morning when we met again I immediately asked if we could go somewhere that evening so I wouldn’t have another evening stuck in my hotel room feeling alone and hungry. Because I didn’t eat dinner on Tuesday night, after spending two hours completely lost in a foreign city the last thing I wanted to do was go back out and attempt to order food somewhere. So on Wednesday we went to this really nice park, had a fantastic pizza at this place near to a children’s museum, and then I went back to my hotel for a few hours while they went home to relax for a few hours, before meeting back up that evening for drinks. I tried writing a bit, but I couldn’t get anything coherent written, and after that I didn’t bother trying again the whole trip.

We went out drinking every night I was in the city after that, other than Thursday, and I think if I’d have only asked we would have done so on Tuesday and even possibly Monday as well. As soon as I mentioned the idea she was very enthusiastic, and after that night on the other days she was the one asking to do it again and told me she had checked the train times and everything. The first night was lovely, we went to a cocktail bar for one drink, then an “Irish pub”, which was really just a normal british pub. The guy behind the bar was English, which immediately put me at ease the same way the tour guy had the day before, and I had a pint of Guinness and actually felt at home. Then we went to a pub right in front of the Colosseum, I had this really good beer called Leffe (which is unusual, because I don’t usually like light beer), and pic below was the view when we left to get the train home.

The second night wasn’t particularly interesting, though it was still really nice. We didn’t go to a pub really, just a small restaurant that also had a bar. I had a huge plate of pasta, one of the biggest portions I’ve ever been served in a restaurant, and we chatted. We talked a lot while drinking, obviously, which was really nice. With inhibitions slightly lowered by alcohol, conversation of course could flow much more easily, not as much on the second night but certainly on the first and third. Really those nights out were the only time I think any of us felt fully comfortable, her boyfriend and her both being kind of awkward people like myself. We went to this late night pastry shop after the restaurant which was interesting, it had a funny double entendre in the name that didn’t translate perfectly into English.

The third night we went out was my favourite I think, though it was kind of a surreal one. The whole day was actually, because we went to the area where my friend actually lives. It’s a little further out than my hotel, just under an hour on the train from where I was staying, by the sea. I guess like a suburb, or connected town. We went to see the seaside, walked along the beach and watched the sunset, and had dinner at this place on the way back to the station that night. The weird part though, was seeing the inside of her apartment. After all, this is a place I’ve only seen in pictures at various points over the last six years on a laptop screen. It was very weird for me to actually be there, almost like I’d stepped through a portal. Her pets which I’ve seen loads of photos of, and her room, I even met her mother. The dog was lovely, though a little fat, it would stand over the cat watching it eat after finishing it’s own food, which I found quite amusing.

So that night we found another pub, and so began a rather strange evening. First of all, we sat down and there was this television show on in the back where we were sat which was very odd. It was some kind of national music competition, like Eurovision but only within Italy, but as the night went on the contestants became more and more bizarre. The first couple of performers were very boring, a middle aged man in a shiny suit singing a very emotive ballad, a woman in a long ballgown crooning into the microphone, but later there was boy band (penguin squad or something like that) dressed in black and white jumping around all over the stage, a guy dressed in orange who stole a purse from a woman in the crowd, a transvestite dancing around with a twink while barely bothering to actually sing.

The staff of the place we were at were themselves more interested in the show than doing their job, at one point I think there were four or five of them sitting in the back with us. It was a very small place as well, no idea why so many staff were needed, and there were more who weren’t working that day because I was told they were gossiping about another girl woman who worked there a few times. There was this very strange little dog, more like something between a rat and dog actually, very slim. Short brown fur, a skinny little neck with large round head. It was on a lead, but it was allowed to just roam around the place pretty freely.

I tried various cocktails, a Pina Colada, a Long Island Iced Tea, some others which I forget the name of now. I remember going back to the bar at one point to order one and Friday I’m In Love by The Cure was playing. Towards the end of the evening, she took out her bag and told me she had a gift. Three small notebooks, one of which I’ve already started using, and a key ring with some artwork from the Little Prince and a quote in the original French. It was lovely, I felt bad for not getting her a gift myself, especially because I had considered trying to find one to bring from England but forgot about. Next time maybe, if there is a next time.

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye

There’s still so many things I haven’t been able to mention, some of my favourite moments of the trip I’ve had to leave out. I probably walked more in that week than any other week of my life. I had great food every day, and saw so many wonderful pieces of history, but most importantly of all – despite the few issues lurking beneath the surface – I felt what it was like to actually have someone who really wants to spend time with me. I have my friends yes, and when we do get together we get on incredibly well, but it’s difficult to actually make that happen. Last week, there was someone who actually really wanted to and was consistently making the effort to spend time with me. For that I am forever grateful, and it has really helped my confidence. I’ve only been back a week, but I’m having a far easier time talking to my co-workers or the customers. I feel like I’m speaking more clearly, that people are understanding me more easily.

It’s odd, because while I got along pretty well with the girl I was visiting I was still pretty shy and quiet the whole time. She misheard me or had to ask me to repeat myself a few times, and I had the same issue with her, but that did happen less and less as the week wore on. I don’t know if this is something temporary, if I will gradually return to my usual meek and lifeless way of life, but for now I feel a vigour I haven’t felt in a while. Since before I first was introduced to this girl actually. I will have to wait and see if it continues beyond a week, it may just be nothing more than a feeling of refreshment after getting away from things that will pass shortly. Either way, I’m back.

Unexpected journey

This coming Saturday there is an evening planned with everyone I work alongside, much like the one I went to and described in this entry just over a month ago. I don’t think it will follow the exact same routine as last time, for one thing the boss (a middle aged man with a wife and children) will be there this time which means we’re unlikely to end up at a nightclub at three in the morning. I could be wrong, but I feel like it’s probably not his scene. Then again, it’s not mine either. I kind of glossed over this in that entry as I was rather preoccupied with trying to talk about one thing in particular, but that night was actually the first time I’ve ever been to one before. I’m sure that doesn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who knows even a little bit about me. I’ve been in similar kinds of environments a few times before, but never an actual proper “club”.

It wasn’t a typical experience of course, in fact to see me there accompanied by three women I must have appeared quite different from the complete loser I really am. It’s rather an amusing image given that context. The typical nightclub experience from what I understand, is of same sex packs of men and women, seeking to get as drunk as possible and secure a one night stand. Normie favourite top 40 choons provide the soundtrack as the hierarchy of attractiveness is formulated under dim lighting through the medium of crude dancing, it’s like an absurd game. The abrasive flashing lights and overly loud music the artificial obstacle, the self sorting of people the ultimate objective. In my case the music was there and the lights, but the game was something I was only a spectator of. Me and my co-workers found ourselves in a corner some distance from everyone else in the place.

I did dance, briefly with the girl who was the focus of the entry I wrote about that evening, but we were really just goofing around. I didn’t sense the same connotations as I did when seeing the normies grinding on one another, if anything in my mind I was taken back to times spent dancing around as a little kid with my friends. I haven’t seen here since that night actually, I will see her tomorrow for the first time. Hopefully I can finish this entire entry tonight, if not I at least hope to have it finished before Saturday and the staff get together. This time without being around her has been good, because it’s helped me to get back to normal. In fact some part of me thinks maybe it would be better if I never saw her again, if she hadn’t have come back to work and instead decided to remain back home.

I don’t want to be the person who wrote that entry linked at the start of this one, which is the same person who wrote the very earliest stuff you’ll find on this blog. I want to be someone who remains clear headed. I don’t mean to be excessively self deprecating, but reading that post conjures up an image of someone who is contemptible to me. If I imagine it having been written by someone else that is. I understand that a lot of people reading like that kind of post from me the most, the kind where I am most emotional and expressive, and I do admit there is something there that is rather moving in a way that my other posts aren’t. I’m not intending to hide my feelings, this blog is where I can comfortably share that sort of thing anonymously and I actually do think that something about being in that more emotive state does improve my writing.

I’m really talking more specifically here about the exact feeling about which that post was written, oneitis or whatever you want to call it. I’ve long grown past the age where such thoughts are appropriate, historically speaking I’m of marrying age and yet I’m still experiencing crushes like a barely pubescent boy. People I went to school with have had children, it’s like they’ve had a whole life I never even knew. I’m about the same age Elliot Rodger was on the Day of Retribution, and aside from the murderousness I’m in a pretty similar situation. I really don’t want these feelings, I feel like there’s something wrong with me when I do. I’ve explored the feeling in depth, long time readers will know I’ve talked about on quite a few occasions, I know that it comes from a place of desperation and I hate that.

It’s particularly annoying because after this one post in particular where I tried to examine the idea of “oneitis” in as detached a way as possible, I really thought I had rationalised the feeling away permanently. Oh how foolish I can be sometimes. So now I’m just anticipating having another day like the one I wrote that entry on, all those feelings all over again. I’m really not looking forward to it, I’m half considering pretending to be feeling ill and not showing up on Saturday. I want to go though, we’re all exchanging presents (a game of secret santa, left this late because several people are only just now back from visiting home), I have bought one for someone and will be recieving one. I also just enjoy it, I’m one step removed from being a complete hikki I take what little human interaction I can get.

I wish I could just enjoy it, this will be the sixth of these little meetups we’ve had since I’ve started this job and all the ones which were not accompanied by any of these sort of feelings were actually really nice even with my usual social awkwardness. In fact I talked about the other two previous to the one around Christmas time in older posts on this blog here and here. Neither of those posts were exclusively about those evenings, the second one I don’t think had more than a line or two in reference to it, I just feel the need to always link a post if I mention it just in case anyone is curious. There are a lot more new people reading these now for some reason, who perhaps might be interested in going back to read my older posts. So by all means feel free, but do bear in mind that there are quite a few of them that are pretty crappy.

Just reading through that first post of those two I just linked, I’ve been reminded that I didn’t just talk about how I enjoyed the evening so much because I didn’t have feelings for anyone there, but I also kind of predicted the exact feeling I’m dreading experiencing this coming Saturday. In some sense any interaction with her will feel tainted by my feelings, and insincere because of course I’m hiding them. When before as described in that very entry I was really pleased at being able to just enjoy the company of these people I work with without there being any kind of hidden desire being held. I was just appreciating the company of others, and I went home feeling perfectly content because there was nothing I had felt I had to achieve by being there other than merely being there.

Last time just before Christmas however, I spent most of the evening wondering what she was thinking and just longingly staring at her like a simpering pet, it really was pathetic. And even though I am not, and was not at the time, affording any validity to the idea that there will ever be anything between me and this girl (or woman I suppose, she is in her late 20s) I still felt a failure after the evening was over. That is the problem with this feeling, I call it oneitis but I suppose the more widely used term is unrequited love, every interaction with the object of it ends with you feeling like a failure. These evenings much more intensely so than the brief ten minute interactions we usually have most weeks, but it’s definitely there for every single one to some extent. It has been a breath of fresh air to have that dissipate as she’s been away, and I do not welcome it’s return.

I wasn’t experiencing it for that long before that last evening out though, it has been relatively recent. Perhaps the feelings I have began to develop again only a month or two before that evening, it’s not like they’ve been there all along and I was just lying (either on this blog which I have no reason to do as it’s completely anonymous, or just to myself) when I said that I had exorcised any budding interest for her after she first started and I found out she had a boyfriend. I really did manage that somehow, and it’s important I make this clear because I don’t want that post I was just talking about a couple of paragraphs ago to be invalidated by the more recent one. At the time it was written, those were my honest feelings. It’s a shame that things didn’t stay that way, but they were that way. The question is, why didn’t they stay that way?

I know it can be annoying when I keep referencing back to older things I’ve written, but in that one post I linked earlier where I tried to really analyse the idea of oneitis in as detached a way as possible (naively thinking it was something I wouldn’t experience again, and that it was something I could choose to stop feeling), one of the main conclusions was that in most cases the person experiencing the feeling doesn’t actually really like or know much about the person they claim to have feelings for. I was mostly drawing on my own experiences, though I have read a lot of greentext stories about these kinds of things over the years as well. Yet now I really do feel like I genuinely like this girl. I don’t know a great deal about her, but I know far more than I did about any of the other girls I’ve called oneitis.

More importantly we get along, I feel comfortable in her company and not awkward at all which is pretty weird for me. Even if I don’t know much about her interests or anything like that, it doesn’t matter because those things are kind of superficial anyway. I know I like the person I’m interacting with, her temperament and demeanour around me inspires a fondness that I do think is genuine. Then I start to wonder what the chances of that really are. I write a post and find myself with this new revelation that I never really truly liked any of my past crushes and then a few months later I just happen to find someone that I really do genuinely like this time. I can’t even trust reality, I can’t even be sure if I’m actually experiencing the things I think I’m experiencing.

One thing I’m sure of is that oneitis is an evolutionary strategy designed to inspire those who are not currently procreating to… do so. There’s a reason that the phenomenon is associated with my fellow losers from 4channel.org rather than billionaires and movie stars. Of course we are complicated creatures and so all our personal baggage complicates the feeling, but at it’s core that is why the experience exists in humans. It’s also pretty much a male phenomenon only, again because for the most part women can get laid or find a partner if they want to so there is no need for this “push in the right direction” that I think oneitis essentially originally developed to function as. How powerful is this feeling though? Is it genuinely capable of convincing me I actually like a person that I otherwise wouldn’t? Because that is actually quite a scary prospect if you think of the implications.

It would mean that you can’t trust any of your feelings, anything opinion you have at all in fact. This is why I hate these kinds of evolutionary explanations for feelings or behaviour, the all emotions are just chemicals in your brain bro rick and morty talk. It really does depress me when I’m forced to think about it, I don’t like the idea that my thoughts and feelings are anything other than what they appear to be. Even though that does seem to be the case. I really do feel different with her though, and I noticed this before I started to develop feelings for her this more recent time. I know that she’s very friendly with people as a rule and so for her part nothing is different when interacting with me than with anyone else, but for me I do find myself acting differently.

I’d like for her to be secretly harbouring similar feelings, and because I’m a narcissistic mental case part of me thinks she might even though there is no good reason to, but I am also capable of thinking rationally and I realise that it’s incredibly unlikely for reasons I’ve gone into already before. So her being easy to talk to and very friendly might partly explain why she isn’t interested in me, but it doesn’t explain why I don’t find it awkward interacting with her when I do with almost everyone else. In fact I recently talked about how few people there are who I can really relax and be comfortable around in another post, and other than her they’ve all been male. I’ve known plenty of very friendly and open people both male and female, and them being that way didn’t help me feel any less awkward around them.

There’s this awful normie term to describe it when two people are somehow compatible, they say “they have chemistry”. Another similar term is “sexual tension”. I wouldn’t say that I have that with her, I just don’t have that energy and I never will in any circumstance. I’m not that kind of person, I have this naïve vibe that I can’t ever shake and honestly I don’t really want to. Even when in an environment with a woman who I know for a fact is attracted to me, because they’ve asked me out, there is no chemistry or tension I don’t believe. I’m too obsessed with purity, I am in all senses anti-sleaze. There’s something though, something that may very well be entirely one sided, and it’s making me doubt everything for reasons I’ve just explained. I don’t want to deal with it, and all the other feelings that I was dealing with this time just over a month ago that might come bubbling back up again after Saturday.

I just need to get away from everything, from all the people I know and everything that is familiar to me. Luckily I will be, I’m going to be leaving soon. I actually already attempted this right after writing that post I’m responding to in this one. After the feeling continued for several days I couldn’t take it any more and the only means of escape I could think of was the most literal kind. There’s only one place in the world other than the city I live in where I know anyone, Rome (I also happen to really find Roman history fascinating so that’s a bonus too), and so I began making plans to leave as soon as the decade started. I was going to leave on the first Monday of January, but I was told that I was really needed at work as we were understaffed already.

By this point a week or so had passed and I was starting to feel normal again, but I knew that the feelings would likely return as the dinner we’re going to this weekend was already planned back then, and upon thinking about it I realised the trip would be a nice idea regardless, and so I rescheduled it by a month. So, on the first Monday of February Anon is going to Rome. The eternal city, not just the once great capital of European civilisation but to this day the heart of Christendom. The city I live in is also very important historically, but it’s a very different place. It’ll be a really interesting experience I think, and if nothing else I’ll be able to get away from this godforsaken situation I’ve been living in for way too many years briefly.

I was intending to spend quite a bit of time in this entry talking about the idea of travel, specifically travel or travelling/ tourism in the 21st century, as it is something I have quite a lot to say about. I think I’m going to leave it though, I’ll write about that to be sure but I’ll give the subject it’s own separate post. Spoiler alert, I’m going to come off like a cynical and bitter faggot when I do write it, but I won’t be as harsh as some people on /r9k/ tend to be regarding the subject. I’m also not going to bring my laptop with me, so as well as being away from everything else in my life I’m going to be away from this blog for the first time since I started it. Which is something I am not entirely happy about, but I know that even if I took my laptop with me on the plane I’d still have very little time to write anyway. I will bring a notebook with me to keep notes, and hopefully the trip will inspire a good post or even several when I return.

I’m hesitant about it because over the last couple of months I’ve very suddenly grown an audience almost out of nowhere. I’ve been essentially writing to myself for over year, there have been a couple of you since the beginning but at all times there was the thought in the back of my mind that any day could be the day I stop getting visitors for good. I frequently went weeks without anyone visiting, but now I get multiple visitors every day. It’s strange, and I’ve been wondering if it’s actually the same people coming back or if for some reason I’m being promoted somewhere without realising it. Either the wordpress reader could be doing it, or some search engine, or who knows. So I know you people don’t comment, but I’ve made a poll to try and figure out what’s happening here and if you could just quickly respond to it I’d appreciate it.

Here’s the link https://www.strawpoll.me/19290209/. Don’t worry, this isn’t going to become a tradition it’ll be a one time thing. I’m just trying to get to the bottom of the sudden change not begin harvesting your data for the Chinese government. There probably won’t be another upload before I leave, I’m working five days next week and will be making some preparations for the trip, so it may very possibly be three weeks or slightly over until there is. It’s going to be difficult for me to see the visitors every day on the stats page if current trends continue, the one good thing about having almost no audience was that I didn’t feel like I’d be letting people down by not posting frequently enough. I’ve announced it as clearly as I can though, so at least I know that no one is expecting anything.

Maybe I’ll have time to write the next section for the Pre-Socratics post, I’ll probably read the next chapter over the next couple of days, and I’ll maybe at least start the next full post before leaving which will give me something to quickly resume and upload after I return. It is going to be quieter around here than usual though. Thanks for reading, as always.