Il Verificador

I rode the bus illegally yesterday morning on my way to Santa Maria Novella. La fiducia. It was the first day of March, and my abbonamento was therefore expired. In my defense, I was on the bus in order to buy my new bus pass!

I felt like a badass, like a rebel (and then like a poser, because it is probably the biggest rebellion I'll stage here), but mostly I felt like an Italian. Fight the system, right?

Well, that evening on my way home, new abbonamento in hand and freshly stamped, I saw my first verificador. I was legal! I was legitimate! I was (hopelessly) American. On that ride, the bus-police, as I call them, caught not one, not two, but FIVE would-be free-loaders.

They sucked it up and paid their fine, their faith in the validity of their honor system not shaken but rather confirmed by the fact that they had been caught. Because if there was no chance of being caught, no threat of punishment, there would therefore be no need to trust in that time they would NOT be caught--faith in that one time, which stretches into a hundred times, until la loro fiducia comes to rest in the act of being caught rather than the act of getting away with something.

Oh Italia... I know something in me is changing when all of this is actually making sense.

Il Vaticano

So… the Vatican. You have to do it, and honestly I was dreading it a little bit. But as soon as we got there and dribbled out of our tour buses onto the wet pavement outside the Vatican wall, rain dribbling (dribbling, drabbling, drizzling) over us—there was that instant of recognition, that I was somewhere very important and very special, and from that instant I felt, for at least a few more instants, Italian. Or at least Catholic.


I love to hear Italians speak English. Our tour guide said the most amazingly detailed things (most of which went completely over my head) about the Sistine Chapel, the history of the Vatican city, and the roots of the Catholic faith in Italy. But I was more enraptured by her charming malapropisms and mispronunciations, especially the word “choosen” and her difficulty with any and all prepositions, which are, granted, pretty tricky. My favorite memory of the day was her description of the ceiling grotesques as “women turning into, you know, like vegetables—not grotesque, as in ugly, just a little bit weird.”

This time around I was able to appreciate more of the art than when I came in high school: Rafael’s angels’ wings, the shimmering silk tapestries, the storied progression across the Sistine Chapel, and most of all the sheer magnitude of art amassed in this tiny state. And then after the museum, the church…

The inside of the Basilica was (and I know I overuse this word but this time it is absolutely correct to say) literally a spiritual experience. I ended my visit feeling so small, as if I can’t quite (and never will) see above the grownups’ knees to know what they’re talking about, but like a child, enveloped in thick blanket of faith in those higher-ups.

On a lighter note, literally (I’m on a role today), we went back the next day and it was sunny! And I got to re-take all of my dark and hazy pictures, inserting my new friends in the foregrounds.