Sweet

Romans know about sweetness. Not a cloying, saccharine, Krispy Kreme, hurt your teeth kind of sweetness. But the sort of sweetness that suffuses you with a lingering pleasure. The sweetness of warm sun on the back of your neck in spring. Or the scent of fresh mown grass. Or the taste of biting into ripe fruit.

You're no doubt familiar with La Dolce Vita - “The Sweet Life” - immortalized in Federico Fellini’s social satire of the same name. For Fellini, "the sweet life" was the hedonism that the beautiful but vapid people who inhabit his film indulge in to the point of self-loathing. Yet, watching Anita Ekberg's iconic scene in the Trevi Fountain, you want to wade in after her - to revel in the joy of being alive. For La Dolce Vita is also about the pleasure that comes from truly experiencing the world you inhabit - in the moment - without fear - and sometimes without inhibitions.

But there is another kind of sweetness, equally as enticing - Il Dolce Far Niente - loosely translated “The Sweetness of Doing Nothing.” Do not imagine, however, that Far Niente is mere idleness, sluggishness, or laziness (all underrated virtues to be sure). It is rather a uniquely Roman version of Parisian café culture. Enjoying the piazzas and fountains and monuments of this city. Sitting in the Piazza Navona with an espresso, or on the Spanish Steps with a gelato. Romans watching their fellow citizens pass by and being watched in turn. As Americans, we've been bred to feel guilty if we have 5 unprogramed minutes of time. For the Romans, however, Il Dolce Far Niente is a perfectly legitimate way to experience life - and requires less effort than all the appointments, meetings, workouts and play-dates on our collective BlackBerries.

I have written of my love for Paris, but I suspect that at the end of the day, I would answer as did Audrey Hepburn’s Princess Ann in Roman Holiday when asked by the press at the conclusion of a European tour which of her destinations she had most enjoyed. She struggled to give a diplomatic response and then blurted, “Rome! By all means, Rome! I will cherish my visit here in memory as long as I live.”

What makes Rome so special?
Partly its the fact that as much as it is a vibrant, living, breathing city, you can feel yourself sideslip through time here - momentarily lost in the Renaissance, or the Roman Empire. If you let your imagination take you there, you can conjure the Rome of Julius Caesar, or envision it as Michelangelo must have first seen it in the late Quattrocento.

But when I think of the Eternal City, what I imagine is a sort of collective memory that residents, and even to an extent visitors, can tap into - a kinship with Romans from time immemorial who have seen it all come and go over the millennia. Empires have risen and fallen here along with the monuments that have celebrated them. And all the while, the people who have lived here have done just that - lived here. And shrugged. And gone on doing what they were doing. And waited. After all, what was a mere decade or century to them when their city dated back millennia? They had the time to wait out the Neros and Borgias and Mussolinis of the world. Is it any wonder that domani - tomorrow - is a favorite word of Romans (one often frustrating to foreigners bent on keeping to rigid schedules and having demands met immediately). For Romans, there is little that cannot wait until domani, for they have learned to enjoy both the sweetness of life and to take the time to cherish the sweetness of doing nothing.