The e Ovid

To reach the place where the air is fresh and sweet, James Taylor goes up on the roof, I go out on the balcony. At night the stars, they put on a show for free, and the clarity of it has only become more beautiful as the air makes its yearly transition from summer sauna to fall crisp. As with any transition, my adapting to Rome has been a gradual one; I started as an outsider, viewing the city with awe before retreating to the great indoors. Now, however, I don my sweatshirt and pajama pants while idly twirling spaghetti as I take in my surroundings as home, rather than a foreign entity. Instead of viewing my balcony as a plank over the ominous ocean that is Rome, I now see it as a grotto of sorts, protected from the rain by the apartment above, but open enough to feel the breeze and take in the passing world from my plastic deck furniture.

I settled in this afternoon with tea and Ovid and, while reading his, I experienced my own metamorphoses. As he used a fusion of Greek and Roman mythology as a vehicle for his own political and social expression, I realized that my time here is a fusion of my own origins with this new Roman world. This will hopefully result in a somewhat new identity comprised of past experiences and fresh insight for the future. My time here is about so much more than the classes, the separation, the new faces; it is about a reevaluation and perhaps reestablishment of self. This is not to say that being abroad is a time for abandonment or rejection of the past, but rather an opportunity to stand at the cusp of something new and make a conscious decision about what comes next.

This is our second chance. Do we go home to the same people, majors, and activities, or do we have different needs that have grown from our time alone?

As the warmth of home fades away and the sometimes cold clarity of the next season stares us in the face, we get to choose what will comfort us during what comes next. It is the fall, a season of transition, the time for the literal fall, the errors and mistakes. We walk out without a sweater thinking it will be warmer than it actually is, we put on a jacket only to have to peel it off when we step outside. So as I sit abroad from both my Roman and U.S. homes, my spaghetti now cooled, I wonder how I and the people in my life will emerge from this time of change.