Unimaginable Italy

A year and a half later, I'm left with two lasting memories of our trip to Italy--first, the endless parade of astonishing museums and art. To witness what we and so many others have did in the cradle of Western art and literature is far more wonderful than anyone can describe--or show, for that matter. You've got to be there.

I could go on endlessly. 

But the memory that comes in, in a not-close second is immense crowds. People were everywhere--like us, tourists bobbing cameras on their chests, their phones up and about catching a gadzillion images every hour. 

Oops. That one shouldn't have been there.

We went to Italy in September to avoid crowds. I don't want to think about what it must be like to be there in July or August. When you put your billfold away, you had to be sure that you weren't in another guy's pocket. 

Let me foul the air a bit. Thinking about Rome or Venice without crowds is unimaginable, as unimaginable as Wall Drug at the Rapture (assuming a kind of universalism most post-mills wouldn't buy). I happened by not long ago, the Lone Tourist.

It's flat-out impossible to imagine St. Mark's immense piazza without a throng. Impossible.

But that's where we are right now. Impossible as it to imagine, that's where we are--and that's where we're not--



because of respiratory droplets carrying minuscule pathogens so minute they can't even be photographed. 



Humbling. All of it, immensely humbling.