beauty and brutality

My passion is for people, their stories, their lives, and that character that makes none the same yet none truly different. The fingerprint, the snowflake, the individual to me is art in motion. I walked through the halls of St. Peter's Basilica, the mother church of all Catholicism, lined with statuary crafted so finely that marble looks like linen, and metal resembles the delicate curves of a women's soft figure. In sheer astonishment of the talent displayed before me my mind wanders with thoughts about who this person forever cast in stone truly is, what brought them here, just as my path has brought me to there feet. Or that Michelangelo, although highly regarded for his sculpting was so bogged down by insecurities believed the last judgement to be a blemish within the walls of the sistine chapel. I may never know what he felt but I can know, what moves those around me. What I do know is of the mother and her son who accompanied me throughout today's adventure. I know that Jo the 40 year old mother climbed nearly six hundred stairs to stand next to brad, her son, who will soon be finishing college to see from the top of the highest Basilica dome, the city and to see it together. " I had to drag him away before he left for good" she jokes while peering over at the man who was once her child. and brad, yet another snowflake is in search of the perfect something to bring home to the women he loves." I want to find something that truly stands out." he tells me covered in sweat from the roman sun. " Something beautiful?" I ask "yes" he explains, "something that's pretty enough for her" . I nod, for it is a feeling I understand, an emotion that is older than the Colosseum. I later pull myself from a sleep to hot that feels like a fever dream but yet is just another rest in Roma. I follow my noes to the cafe within the hotel for homemade lasagna with local spinach, sauce and mushrooms with a salad that was collected from the garden minutes after I ordered it. The two women working, one a mixed girl from Canada with eyes the color of green amber the other a petite roman with a pixie haircut and a shirt completely made of sequence debate over the southern region of Italy. "I will move to Holland or Denmark, but will never return to Sicily" the native Italian states firmly. " The corruption and the mafia makes it miserable". We talk about corruption, how it touches every inch of the earth. I tell them of my city and how the big three stole it's livelihood, and how I believe the grassroots of music and art will one day revive it. "bellezza e brutalità" .the three women from all stretches of the earth agree,that beauty and brutality is the world today. I may never truly know any of these people, but I know the insecurity of an artist, the love of a mother and the pain of corruption. Sitting in this lovely garden I am not alone, I am part of something grand. Together, we are all the snowfall.