Caput Mundi

«Rome reminds me of a man who lives by exhibiting to travelers his grandmother’s corpse.»
James Joyce, Letters, 1906

This place has the face of Venus and the ass of an old whore: falling and withered, it is a slave of a past that does not want to pass.  The signs are hidden in all the small details, everywhere you look. Here are those who feel a sad omen and who take such liberties which are usually granted only to the mad and dying.  These “chosen ones” revealed to me the secret: here they will die tomorrow. Each of them faces the future with their own weapons. The bravest laugh at destiny. Maybe this place does not exist. Nothing will happen tomorrow, it will be the same as before. And in a hundred, a thousand days, nothing will happen. It will be the same as before. Here.

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