One of my favorite books of the last few years is Lawrence Weschler's Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences, gorgeously published by San Francisco's own McSweeneys'. It attempts to show or create connections between different artworks, public spaces, and ways of thinking and seeing that have echoed in Weschler's life. It is intuitive, mysterious, occasionally infuriating, and completely gorgeous. Above is an example of a convergence between my experience in Rome, and a hiking trip last summer where I got a gnarly blood-blister under my left-toenail, which then took a full month to heal and then fall off. But it could be worse! This poor foot still has its little toe, but the rest are MIA, as is the entire rest of the leg/body system of which it was a key component.
This is a sculptural fragment from the ruins of the Palace of Domitian on Palatine hill, overlooking the Roman Forum to the North, the Capitoline hill to the West, and the former Circus Maximus to the South. The Circus Maximus, by the way, certainly lived up to its name: it sat the most people of any public arena ever, an estimated 300,000. It was also the site of the vast majority of early Christian martyrdoms, and not the Colosseum. According to the tour guide who lead my family through the Colosseum (so take it with a grain of salt), only one Christian martyr can be placed in the Colosseum. The Colosseum, by the way, sat 50,000, with standing room for 30,000 more. From inside it felt almost intimate, which made me very queasy when I considered the type of spectacle that would have been perpetrated there.

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