"To talk of 'entering' the past is absurd. But one can be entered by it, to a degree." --Elizabeth Bowen, 'A Time in Rome'
Heeding warnings I've heard about gifted pickpockets, I put my passport in my sock and wade into the teeming streets. My guidebook directs me to the Duomo, where San Gennaro's blood miraculously liquefies twice a year. His relics repose in the dazzling Chapel of the Treasure, encrusted with gold, silver, and precious stones, inlaid with colored marbles -- a soaring grotto of the High Baroque, every surface announcing the Church Militant.
As it happens, a very satisfactory miracle has taken place the previous morning, and Gennaro's blood is on view again today. The padre turns and turns the crystal reliquary to show that liquefaction has occurred. A hundred school-children line up to press their lips to the glass. My passport, meanwhile, has ridden up my sock and is now somewhere on the cathedral floor.
A couple of hours later, in another part of town, when I realize what has happened, I retrace my steps, legs turning to gravy. Every word of Italian deserts me. (It's a passport, for heaven's sake, easily replaceable at the American consulate. My anguish is an affront to stateless persons everywhere.)
When I get back to the cathedral, I find that it has closed for the afternoon. A few mendicant dogs lie about the front steps in a manner specific to southern Italy: on their sides, as if dead. It is a blistering day, and an elderly man sits fanning himself in the shade of the central door -- with my passport.
He's been waiting for me; and I can say with Goethe, on his arrival here, "Either I have always been mad or I am so now."
This miracle, this superb gentilezza, is for real.
Reprinted from NAPLES DECLARED by Benjamin Taylor with permission of Marian Wood Books/Putnam, a member of The Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright (c) 2012 by Benjamin Taylor.
There.
BZ.
But after that, you, american people, have to stop putting your socks-covered feet into a pair of sandals: http://t1.ftcdn.net/jpg/00/32/15/24/400_F_32152427_ROoB0ftcbw1riJdiZ02Oou2UhpBZMN2d.jpg
It is an unacceptable view! :))
Bye from Vesuvius!
BZ.
And, they don't object to America's love of sandals. And the views of Vesuvius are amazing.
Big hugs to you, sbobo77.
BZ.
Seriously, I want to see Pompeii, Herculaneum and a bunch of other places in Napoli, but I should sleep well South of where Pliney the Elder met his end!
BZ.
If keeping a passport for someone who dropped it is a miracle, then I must be a supernatural deity.
With the eleven dollars intact.
Passport returned? - Definite 6
Sliced bread wins every time.
But seriously folks,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, the work "miraculous" an adjective derived from the word "miracle" is unique in that it derives from a word, ( a noun), that describes an event, a miracle, that is always fictional, that is not real. In reality, there are no real miracles.
The only remarkable thing here, aside from a guy who is dumb enough to put his passport in his sock, is that this sentence was approved by HuffPo "editors."