It was hard to leave Rome.
Note to self: after seeing so many beautiful life-digging Italians with beauty marks like yours you are so not ever removing yours from your face so remove that thought from the In Basket. You have a genetic thing going on in that little spot, baby.
One moment included a tour of San Sebastiano's catacombs, something I had to do. He's one of the Bible's sexy characters and allegedly this place not only was extensive, the oldest, the baddest but where his remains, and one of the actual arrows which pierced his Biblical flesh, linger.
Tour is 5 Euros (the Italians I asked are not digging the conversion and most shopkeepers counted the money out slowly, especially the seemingly endless variation of coin denominations) and we had a tour"guide"lady who spoke quickly in an Indian accent and she marched us along. At one point (being highly accustomed to the tour and the being led around from my international travel grant experiences) I lagged way behind to get a sense of the space on my own terms. I poked about, breathing the old dirt air. I looked into one of the body coves and discovered a small thin bone. Or stick. I put it into my jacket pocket and felt its moistness.
At the end of the tour there was not a mention of any arrow.
Where is the arrow? I asked.
Answer: In one of those boxes up on the altar (gesture of waving in general direction), it's not visible to the eye.
Wait wait and tour lady disappears behind a door and just then another tour appeared. This tour guide not only mentioned the arrow, but flashed his flashlight up onto a glass-fronted box and guess what the hell I saw? An old freakin' arrow.
Note: if you want a right answer sometimes you must wait for the right tour and mind to float along.
Examined the bone/stick later in my pocket in the sun. It's a 2,000 arm bone fragment. I told whoever's bone this was to visit me in my dreams and say Hi. They didn't, must have been a busy catacomb reunion or something.
After catacomb visited an Italian photojournalistic exhibition in another primo neighborhood, full of feistier people and the shops they require. Saw a poster advertising a Ninja Label of London event at a club in the Piramide District and at what I began to call The Embassy (vaguely English-style bar merging Italians and the English-speaking and whose slogan - on t-shirt I'm now wearing - is Forget the Trevi, Have a Bevy) asked about this hipster Piramide District. A whole mess of clubs. Went there. Ninja thing was slow at getting off the ground and into techno wonder so we walked along a street lined with dance clubs, people walking along in the warm winter air, some food vendors and cars also on the scene.
Into another club. As I watched the dance floor grow and grow I felt the moist 2,000 arm bone with one hand. The other hand held a scotch and tonic. Italians do not understand the Scotch and soda combo so I started drinking Scotch and tonic to be diplomatic and you know what they say, When in Rome.
Saw last night/early Rome morning filtered through a cloud of hashish thought compliments of generous and happy Italians having another Roman Friday night.