Bittersweet

It's too beautiful outside for me to concentrate on my work. It's the perfect weather, recently: springtime (in fact, when I was walking around outside of Parco della Musica earlier this week, it smelled like summer...) -- but without the side effect of allergies.

Not yet, anyway.

I've been zoning out a good deal more than usual, ever since this semester started. I can't help but play out scenarios that can and do actually take place:

- eating gelati outside of the Pantheon with my friends at 9 o'clock.

- opening the windows to let the soft breeze bring in the sweet smell of food from Campo and the surrounding houses.

- sitting in a local cafe (bar, that is) and working on my sketches.

- spending a sunny afternoon in the courtyard of the apartment picking oranges and lemons ("--say the bells of St. Clement's....'You owe me five farthings,' say the bells of St. Martin's...")

- deliberately getting lost in the city of Rome. For a project.

And in barely two weeks' time, I will be on a plane destined for Istanbul ("--not Constantinople.") Don't worry, Shiel, I'll get you your Turkish Delights. I'll get a lot.

Can't focus.... There's so much on my mind.

I've also been kind of sad. Up until just a few hours ago, I wasn't so sure what it could be.

After hours of defining this feeling and trying to pinpoint exactly what's bugging me, I was left with an underlying question:

Does everyone see what I see?

As an outsider (since I will never belong to this city), I wonder if its own people look around and if so, how often? How closely?

There's such a beauty in every physical sense, even down to the feel of cobblestones under my shoes.

But it's like anyone in their own city: you don't do all the tourist-y stuff because you live there. You could do it anytime you want. So, naturally, you never do any of it... (unless you're like me and you do some of it).

And if you're a tourist, you do all the tourist-y stuff that you can fit in a small number of days.

As a student, I have a little more time remaining that allows me to escape the label of a tourist. But I don't live here. And, eventually, I will have to go back home. It's painful to know, but I'd rather have it that way.

I see more.

Do you understand..?

It's perfectly flawed....