She said she would be arriving in Rome from Frascati by train and would meet us at the station. Termini.
She'd be wearing black. Or, black and red. And because we had never met, she added, "I'm old".
Passengers got off the train. Flora arrived by chariot. Not because she's ancient. Because she's special.
For the historical record, she was wearing black - and red.
A black cape was canvas to a thick, broad, wool or cashmere stripe of bright red that ran from left shoulder down to her shoes. Think: Laurence Olivier as Crassus in Spartacus.
She must have thought we wouldn't recognize her otherwise.
Not a chance. You'd recognize Flora if she was only an extra in the now faded, silent movie version of Ben-Hur.
She volunteered to show us Rome. More than volunteer, Flora was excited to show us Rome. Her Rome.
The Rome that gets glossed over, these days. The way a Presidential debate is no longer a debate but a high school prank. The way we're all off to the next thing. The way Cliff Notes will get you by, fast food is ok and sugar is good until it kills you.
You see, Rome may be eternal but many of Rome's secrets are not. They stop breathing and disappear forever. They die.
The secret is that Rome's secrets are human. They're not made of concrete. (As Flora will tell you, a concrete formula that was lost until Thomas Edison figured out what it was).
The secrets are made of knowledge. So they're much more delicate than the Colosseum and The Forum. They're even more delicate than the Cosmati floor and the 5th century nave mosaics in Santa Maria Maggiore.
But let's get back to old. Flora is an older woman but she's not old. Not in the way you might think.
Flora is old like the travel writers of the nineteen-fifties. They don't make them like that anymore.
Travel writers of the fifties didn't write for the mass traveler audience. The mass travel audience wasn't born yet.
They wrote for themselves. And, they could write. They were well-educated. They got their education in good schools, not factories with desks. The colleges they went to weren't glorified high schools.
They didn't just throw out factoids anybody could get by googling Gaul.
They could think, they could paint with their words. With their brains. They created, they critiqued. Their writings were as much a work of art as the art they were bringing to light.
They were of the nineteen-thirties and much maligned nineteen-fifties. Not the children of the sixties - the marketing department to the world.
Their way of looking at the world didn't make them money like, say, Bill Maher. Most times, it cost them. Like, say, Lenny Bruce. Notice the use of the word - like. First over-used by the beatniks...of the fifties. I digress.
Flora is of the aforementioned higher order: She can think, she can talk, she teaches, she paints without the aid of a brush.
Flora took us to her Rome. She told us to look down when everybody was looking up. When we got tired - Flora doesn't get tired. Exhaustion energizes her - we sat, rested and ate at a place that's not just uncommon by today's standards. It's one of a kind.
There were times I thought my guide was my hero, Eleanor Clark who wrote my favorite travel book, Rome and a Villa. Why? Because to call Rome and a Villa a travel book is to denigrate it.
It's literature. It's poetry. It's not Must See TV.
It's like so many books of that era that are improperly placed in the travel section at Barnes and Noble. Put there by someone who has never, while in a trance, fondled paper pages.
Some of her little secrets we didn't have time to visit
in our whirlwind day. But, as tired as we were, we visited. First thing - the next day.
Again, we were rewarded.
It was a privilege and an honor. Something that doesn't happen every day. And if we keep going the way we're going - if we don't stop and get deep, instead of just broad, my experience might be ancient history. Like a piece of ancient Rome you can only hear about and not see because it's gone. Forever.
And, so, as so many of the essays I write here these days just naturally end, this one reaches its conclusion in much the same way, only different.
Thank you, Flora. I wish I was that old.
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