On the Road with Julie

Time to Read:

My week in Rome was not hurt by the fact that the Colosseum was on my way to school. It’s pretty fun to have something so grand, so striking, so iconic become a part of a daily routine.

And, walking through the city of Rome is a reminder that beauty has infinitely new angles to appreciate. The city itself is, essentially, an outdoor museum – and once you actually do whatever you need to do to get yourself in Rome, well, admission is free.

No matter how many times I walked through ancient Rome, by walking through modern Rome, I could not stop myself from taking new pictures of the same things. I would try to resist, but I just kept being overwhelmed by the beauty revealed from a different angle, and a new light.

Here is the evidence that I couldn’t help myself.

Isn’t that life, though? And the best part of it, as far as I’m concerned. Same sh^%$, different day has room to be reinterpreted. The “different day” part has more to it than meets the eye. With every new day, there are new angles. There is new light. I do think that the fun of life can be found in new and exciting things – I am living that particularly type of joy at the moment. But I also find there’s a lot of new to be found in the old under the shine of a new light. Even though I am on many grand adventures at the moment, I have always also been a deep lover of the joys of habit, routine and the good old fashion delights of living a life every day.

On another, but very much related note, when I was in Vienna, I had the tremendous pleasure of taking music composition lessons, as an aspiring composer. My teacher recommended to me that a great way to develop my technique is to spend 15 minutes a day writing a canon. Even though it’s a fancy musical word, you already know well, what a canon is.

“Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream…”

“Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream…”

“Row, row, row your boat…”

It’s a round! And, the most famous canon of all is also one of my favorite pieces of music ever, Pachelbel’s Canon.

Every day, when I write my canon, I try to let myself be inspired by some part of my day or my experience.

I found myself so overcome by my compulsion to constantly take new pictures of the tremendous sites in Rome from new angles and in new lights, that I even wrote a little canon inspired by it!