Summer's Nearly Gone
Had an interesting weekend exploring Verona. My car got trapped in the garage there, which forced me to wander around for an afternoon longer than I wanted to - it was beautiful, to be sure, to be "trapped" in one of the most Romantic cities on Earth, but also very frustrating not to be able to go where I wanted. I finished writing a longish letter to Mary over a couple Spritz Aperols, and toured all but one of the major churches. I also went to a Catholic Mass at St. Zeno's, which was a big center for medieval pilgrimage. Most of the churches that I have visited thus far have been some flavor of Gothic, or Venetian-Gothic-hybrid, but that was was pretty solidly Romanesque, albeit very "airy" for a basilica-style church. I wanted to see what a religious service would be like, having not been to one in quite a long time. It really didn't affect me that much, but it did set off a lot of pattern recognition and I relearned how humans can be made to function more effectively in a "group-hive-mob" sort of way. Liturgy and ritual are still fascinating, even if they feel very alien now.