a workfellow, an oversharer, showed me pictures of his son’s european summer trip. in his rome leg, his son, who has yet to decide which university to go to this fall, took a rather serious selfie in front of a shrine that, if i still remember the guide book i was heavily relying on when i backpacked italy years ago, commemorates the pool where the mythic twins, castor and pollux, one of whom was a progeny of a mortal woman ravished by zeus masquerading as a swan, were seen watering their supernatural steeds after a particularly rousing victory.
don’t they say the italians—well the romans, first—are a contentious lot? but what is it in their culture, in the heft and weight of their history, that generates and continuously animates these amazing stories? the diminutive napoleon, not a roman, but a corsican, was reported to have said “what is history but an agreed upon fable?”
watching news in pinoy tv this evening, a routine traffic report scanned the area from the northern end of one of the capital’s elevated railways. there was a queue at the foot of the station, at least eight-person deep, that was preternaturally orderly. a man of the street interview featured a sweltering but otherwise grinning commuter telling the on site reporter that it’s just that, manila life. several commuters broke rank to take pictures of the fetching reporter. for a moment, the camera lingered on the hulking monument to the plebeian leader of the philippine revolution just meters away from the station, now patinated with urban grime and acid rain, and slugged like a dump of uncollected garbage in the middle of a traffic oval. then the camera quickly cut away back to the fresh faced reporter who had trouble keeping her hair in place in the wind tunnel under the noisy trains.