Nubifragio
Nubifragio : what a strange word. Or maybe it’s our English word that is strange: storm. The storm of my soul. Il nubifragio della mia anima. Or maybe not. It’s been an exciting week in Rome, with the protests on Saturday and the nubifragio yesterday, putting the city in tilt. In tilt (pronounced: inn til-tah) is another funny expression that Google translates as “haywire.” The metro was closed by flood and Via San Giovanni in Laterno out our window was a river flowing to the Colosseum. The grounds of the Colosseum were once a marsh, made into a lake for Nero’s Domus Aurea, then drained by Titus in his social plan of “giving back to the city.” If our road was a river than the Colosseum must have returned to a lake. This was the first real rain of the season (by real, I mean lasting for more than a couple hours) and as they say, “When it rains, it pours.” Because Simon’s office building was built in a hurry by the Fascists, his windows let in lots of rain and among wires and computers it was advised to stay home. Our windows also let in rain, not because they were put in by Fascists but by 17th century monks. And a mysterious amount of water was found on the bathroom floor along with an obvious drip in the kitchen. The nubifragio moved on; the sun came out and in the evening, as the earth rolled around, we were awed by the silent beauty of electric reds and oranges.
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