Gospel & Universe ♒️ A River Journey

Rome 3: The Eye of the Gods

Oculi - The Tiber

♒️

Oculi

These thoughts keep you late into the evening as you stare up into the black sky. By now the streets are quiet. All you hear is the rat-a-tat-tat of a motor scooter down a backstreet. You look up to the immense temple looming in the darkness. You stare, unknowingly, into the black sky.

The next morning you wake up as late as possible, sip coffee in Piazza Navona, and then walk back and forth, in swooping arcs or jagged right angles, from side to side of the old town. You try to cultivate a philosophic detachment, based in mathematics and geometry, especially in regard to the pretty women and the gelato shops with their mounds of creamy delight. You look beyond the handsome man, with dark stubble on his chin looking at the beautiful woman with skin so white and smooth that she seems to have stepped out of a painting by Raphael. Or as if, after ordering a fior di latte gelato whipped like foam to the salty edges of the crest, she threw herself onto the waves in complete abandon.

You turn away from all that Italian nonsense, and walk over to the Pantheon. As you walk inside, you think about the Romans and the Greeks. And about how the opening of the Pantheon is square, yet the centre is circular. And about how it was once home to the gods, and is now home to the saints and martyrs who deny the existence of these gods.

You stand beneath the dome and stare into the eye, the oculus. You think about human vision, and all the ways it can go wrong — or right. Cyclopes or the inner eye. Sauron or the omniscience of God. The third eye of Shiva.

They are dark caves. Even when they open towards the sun, very little light penetrates down the entrance tunnel into the circular chamber. There is little to see, and no eye to see it, until the visitor arrives for his five minutes, and strikes a match. Immediately another flame rises in the depths of the rock and moves towards the surface like an imprisoned spirit: the walls of the circular chamber have been most marvellously polished. The two flames approach and strive to unite, but cannot, because one of them breathes air, the other stone. A mirror inlaid with lovely colours divides the lovers, delicate stars of pink and grey interpose, exquisite nebulæ, shadings fainter than the tail of a comet or the midday moon, all the evanescent life of the granite, only here visible. Fists and fingers thrust above the advancing soil—here at last is their skin, finer than any covering acquired by the animals, smoother than windless water, more voluptuous than love. The radiance increases, the flames touch one another, kiss, expire. The cave is dark again, like all the caves.  (Ch. 12)

You stand there, persevering through the late afternoon, past the passeggiata, until the eye of the sun winks on the horizon. You wait for the light to wane, foregoing white tablecloths, crispy arrosto di agnello, chianti, and tiramisu. You watch instead how the day turns into night. You stare mutely into the whiteness and then the blackness of the sky beyond. The oculus becomes oculi and the universe a breathing animal watching you from outer space.

The next day, you get up after noon and grab a quick lunch and a double espresso. You forget about lounging in coffee shops and looking at Italian girls strolling by in their luminous skin and laughing eyes. Instead, you climb the steps of the Capitoline with all the other grumbling tourists, go into the museum, and look out over the Forum.

You ponder the vanity of it all. Brought up as a Christian, you feel compelled to remember something from Ecclesiastes. Yet instead you think of Marcus Aurelius: “Consider that as the heaps of sand piled on one another hide the former sands, so in life the events which go before are soon covered by those which come after.” Century after century has fallen into the dust. Only a few spinal columns of Empire are left standing in the air.

You remember to survey the wreck of millennia with a poet’s eye, and to quote Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” especially the immortal lines about the mortality of all things:

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! / Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away.

You remember, above all things, to remember Shelley.

♒️

The Tiber

Then you grab another double espresso and take a walk along the Tiber. Look at how high the water has risen! From ancient times it has remained a mighty surge. And yet the River remains an archetype of change. You giggle, with slight jitters from the four espressos, at the ubiquity of paradox.

You sit on the bank and ponder the vicissitudes of Time. You don’t think about the changes of Time, but rather you ponder the vicissitudes, from the Latin ponderare, “to weigh,” and vicis, “change.” Ruminate the mutability is also acceptable, from ruminari, “to chew the cud,” and mutare, “to change.”

The Tiber whispers its muddy secrets, while all the while it flows into the soil, up the roots, and into the sky. It tells you: Go to Athens, where it all began. Learn Classical Greek and quote Heraclitus on the impossibility of stepping into the same river twice. Potamoisi toisin autoisin embainousin hetera kai hetera hudata epirrei. The Tiber assures you that if you pronounce this sentence properly, you’ll go beyond rivers altogether. You’ll attain the philosophic heights of the Acropolis and see what’s become of the gods.

♒️

Next: Heraclitus: Athens & Allahabad

Back to Top

Table of Contents - Annotated Contents - Layout - Core Beliefs