Once again, in my attempt to stay away from all of the crowds, I decided to walk to 4 somewhat obscure neighborhoods: Garbatella, Esquilino, Sn Lorenzo, and Pigneto.
The first neighborhood I walked to was Garbatella. I am not sure why this was a recommended neighborhood to visit. I am not sure what there is to see here, though I did find a nice path in a green belt. And then I recognized where I was. This is the beginning of my walk last week on the Appian Way.
The next neighborhood was Esquilino. Directions to Esquilino: follow the beautiful cobble stone road and then turn right at the castle.
It turned out not to be a castle but the gatehouse of the old Roman wall.
Follow the wall to the northeast and then make your way through the neighborhoods until you come to the Basilica of San Giovanni, and you are almost there.
It was three miles to Garbatella, and another three to Esquilino.
Esquilino was just like Garbatella. Nothing to see. I thought it was a good idea to avoid the Palm Sunday crowds by walking to these remote neighborhoods. There was just one flaw in my plan: everything is closed on Palm Sunday.
San Lorenzo neighborhood
The walk from Pigneto back home along the ancient wall once again.
On my walk I
thought of an experience I wrote about during my Sabbatical Year travels of
2009-10. For one month during my travels I was teaching school in new Delhi,
India, and wrote about walking through a stinky, congested part of Old Delhi.
There was something about the strong, noxious smells that was actually
attractive. My older son would sometimes tease me about that. My perspective
needs a back story to explain this weird attraction.
I grew up in
the desert, which dried out my nasal passages to where I never smelled
anything. It wasn’t until I went to University on the California coast, and the
damp ocean air gave me the gift of smell. I remember that I would, at times,
walk short stretches across campus with my eyes closed, just taking in all of
the smells. It was an additional layer to reality that I was sensing.
Years later, I
remember once, while on the week-long Oregon Trail trip with my 7th
grade students, we drove through an agricultural area with a very strong smell
of cow manure. As all the students were quickly shutting their windows, I was
intentionally taking in deep breaths of the stench.
But today, as I
was walking, I thought of another reason for this strange preoccupation with
nasty smells. One of the first meditation lessons I would teach my eighth-grade
students at the beginning of the year in their preparation for their Global
studies trip was to close their eyes and pay attention to their other senses. I
would tell them that their senses can be their greatest teachers, for they help us
to ground ourselves in the present, and give us a moment’s relief from our
preoccupation with the past or the future.
I am often in my head. One of the reasons I walk so far is to give my brain a chance to unwind. And then, every now and then, I am nowhere else but here, in this moment, just breathing and feeling and smelling and hearing and seeing it all.
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